Introduction: Fetal death is the loss of the product of conception prior to the expulsion or
complete extraction of the mother's body and was an important marker of public health. There
was strong contrast between developed countries (5 losses per 1,000 births) and emerging
countries (36 losses per 1,000 births). It can be triggered by maternal, fetal, placental, external
or unknown causes, having many risk factors associated with this outcome. Most often
avoidable with good prenatal and delivery care. Making this a serious public health problem,
justifying the need for studies to establish its prevalence as well as its risk factors. Objective:
To identify the risk factors associated with the occurrence of fetal deaths in a referral hospital
in maternal and child care in the State of Pará. Methodology: It is an observational study of the
case-control type, in which the studied population were the pregnant women who evolved to
fetal death (case group) and live births (control group), respecting the inclusion and exclusion
criteria. The data collected came from medical records of patients attended in said service
between January and December of 2017, being stored in a database built in Excel 2016
software, and analyzed by means of descriptive and analytical statistical tests performed in
SPSS 20.0 software.. Results and discussion: A fetal mortality rate of 35.7 per 1,000 births
was obtained. The comparison between the cases and control groups showed statistically
significant differences in the variables age, marital status and birth weight, following what was
seen in previous studies. The following variables were considered as risk factors: ethnicity (OR:
1.5), systemic arterial hypertension (OR: 2.2), other diseases diagnosed prior to gestation (OR:
2.7), syphilis (OR:2.8), malformation (OR: 4.6), highlighting placental abruption (OR:10,4)
and severe preeclampsia (OR:10,5) as the most relevant factors for the fetal death in the present
study. The variables number of medical appointments during prenatal and preterm labor
behaved as a protective factor. The main causes of death were intrauterine hypoxia (48%),
unspecified fetal death (41%) and other causes (11%). Conclusion: It was possible to establish
the reason and rate of stillbirth in this study, as well as the identification of its main causes.
Through the analysis of the variables, a series of risk factors were already documented in other
studies. The improvement of prenatal quality and the adherence of pregnant women to this
service should be the focus of strategies for reducing fetal death in Brazil.
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