Accurate assessment of the number of miscarriages (spontaneous abortions) that occur is not possible as only miscarriages that require hospital inpatient or day-case treatment are recorded. Hospital based information is derived from two sources: the hospital inpatient and day-case record (SMR01) and the maternity inpatient and day case record (SMR02), with individual episodes being derived from only one of these sources. There may be some variation in the accuracy of recording between the two systems and it is possible that areas such as Ayrshire and Arran, which predominately use the SMR02 system, may have more complete data. It is possible that some, particularly early, miscarriages are either managed solely by General Practitioners or may not be recognised by the women and so are never referred to hospital.

For miscarriages, the SMR records for year ending 31 March 2007 are not complete and therefore for the purposes of this publication, these data should be considered provisional. These figures will be revised in future updates to these web pages.

In this section data are presented by financial year (year ending 31 March).

Table: Miscarriages by NHS Board area of residence and maternal age .

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