Home birth tops the British Medical Journal charts.

Home birth appears to be the second most popular subject for readers of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), second only to treatments for heart disease. The BMJ has just released its 2005 annual top 10 list of articles that received the most attention on the web in the first week after publication.

"Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: Large prospective study in North America", published last June 18th, 2005 (reported on in the October 2005 issue of Special Delivery) was the third most popular article among several hundred published in 2005.

In the last 12 days of June of 2005, 6,500 different users accessed the article on the web and in July an additional 2,500 different users. Interest has been sustained--1,250 to 2,000 different users have gone to the article each month since then. The abstract has been accessed more than 7,000 times, the full text HTML over 25,000 times, and over 6,200 copies of the article have been downloaded as a PDF. In total the article has been accessed in some form almost 40,000 times since publication.

The article and 24 letters to the editor (rapid responses) from around the world are available free of charge at www.BMJ.com. To access past issues, choose June 18, 2005, and look under "This Week in the BMJ" to see the summary from the editors and five of the letters to the editor from places as far away as India. Go to the papers section of that issue to download a copy of the paper and read 19 other letters to the editor (located below the article).