Abstract
Objective: Discourse in the form of a bibliographic review on maternal death and nearmiss. Methods: This is a bibliographic review, where all the data collected were obtained from electronic databases such as: Scielo, Lilacs, Medline and PubMed. Results: Maternal death is determined as a tragic episode that affects women during the physiological period of reproduction. In general, maternal death is used as a parameter for assessing the quality of the health service offered, observing situations of inequality and thus cooperating to assess the health levels and socioeconomic evolution of a population. Final Considerations: It is important that the assessment of maternal near miss is implemented and established as a routine in maternity hospitals, using the criteria recommended by WHO, which brings greater specificity and adds other criteria, adjusting with the capacity of each unit. Improving reproductive health conditions is challenging, since most risky situations reach women with little availability of health services.