Characteristics of included studies
This systematic review included one cohort
study[22] and eight cross-sectional
studies[23-30] with 3,821 postpartum women. A
total of 1,823 with traumatic birth and 353 with postpartum PTSD were
included in the final analysis. The included nine
studies[22-30] were conducted in Turkey, the
United Kingdom, Iran, Serbia, Australia and the United States and
published between 2003 and 2020. The overall sample sizes ranged from 77
to 950, the number of traumatic childbirth and PTSD respectively from 15
to 675 and from 2 to 127. For the
assessment scales for birth trauma, five
studies[22,24,26,28,29] used DSM-IV/V A criterion,
three studies[26,28,30] were based on maternal
self-report and one study[23] was unknown. For the
evaluation time of traumatic birth/postpartum PTSD, six
studies[22,25-28,30] were within the 4-8weeks
after birth, one study[29] was at postpartum
1-4months, one study[24] was at postpartum
1-12months , and one study[23] was unknown. Two
types of scales for screening PTSD were used in eligible
studies[22-30], including structured interview
diagnostic scales and self-assessment scales. Of them, seven studies
used PTSD assessment scales[22-24,27-30] that
belonged to the self-assessment scale, including Post-traumatic
Diagnostic Scale (PDS)[22,23,27], Trauma
Experience Survey (TES)[24,28], Post-traumatic
Stress Disorder Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5)[29],
Post-traumatic Stress Symptom Scale-Self-report
(PSS-SR)[30]. And one with the Post-traumatic
Symptom Scale-Interview (PSS-I) [25] and one with
the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale (CAPS) [26],
which were classified as structured interview diagnostic scale. The
characteristics of the included studies are showed in Table 1.