Page last updated: 29-SEP-2009

Births & Babies

The data presented here are obtained from the Scottish Morbidity Record 02 (SMR02) which is submitted by maternity hospitals to ISD, who have collected this information since 1975.

A wide range of information is collected on the SMR02 - some of which are detailed below:

  • mother - age, height, smoking history, previous obstetric history.
  • birth - induction, analgesia, method of delivery, outcome.
  • baby - apgar score, sex, gestation, weight.

Although there is no legal requirement to submit these data to ISD, the level of submission falls only slightly short of the known  total number of births occurring each year. As a result, Scotland has some of the best information on  pregnancy and births available anywhere in the world.

This release includes data for financial year ending 31st March 2008. 

A summary of the key points is available here  .

Tables & charts can be accessed through the menu on the left hand side.

GROS vs SMR02

For year end March 2008 there were 56,537 live births recorded on SMR02 records.  For the same time period there were 60,041 live births registered with the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS).  The shortfall is approximately 2 percent and the majority of this is due to incomplete data submissions from maternity units with the remainder due to a variety of reasons including home births and births in Non-NHS hospitals.  Further details can be found on our notes page . 

Data Issues

There are a few SMR02 data submission issues for the last two years, which affect mainly NHS Tayside and NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde.  These are:

  • The 2006/07 data have been revised.  This mainly affects NHS Tayside where a number of duplicate records (aprox. 500) were deleted from the file.  However, this now results in a shortfall in data from NHS Tayside for financial year 2006/07 which cannot be resolved.
  • There is a known shortfall in data from NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde which mainly affects the Southern General and Royal Alexandra hospitals.  This is currently being addressed and 2007/08 figures will be revised at next year's update.

These data shortfalls affect all tables/charts, but are more noticeable on Table 2 (CHP) and Table 5 (Hospital tabs).

Further details can be found on our notes page .

Perinatal and Neonatal Deaths

Annual reports on Link opens in new windowperinatal, neonatal and postneonatal infant deaths in Scotland are published jointly with NHS Quality Improvement Scotland.