Published
You estimate because it's hard to measure exactly how much blood has been lost. Some blood is suctioned up and some is soaked up with gauze and sponges. So you are basically left estimating the blood loss which is absolutely better than nothing..........P.S: There is no norm for EBL. There are many contributing factors that can affect how much a patient will bleed.
We were always ok with anything 300 and under and I've seen many doctors fudge the EBL at times. We had one birth where the mom pushed and pushed and pushed having obvious PDS with a big headed baby and the dr vacuumed the baby out leaving a hematoma on the woman's cervix. With all of the vaccum attempts (7 or 8!) there was blood everywhere and looked more like a murder scene than a birth. He said the EBL was 140 but my guess was that it was more like 400-500. She ended up being transfused 2 days later.
As the others have said, yeah we and the Docs estimate but after awhile you get pretty accurate. Remember 1 cc = 1 gram. In the beginning I would get a chux then pour some water on it to get an idea of how much so many cc's looked like on the chux. Use a speci cup or whatever so you know how much you are putting on there. Of course you can weigh chux ect on the baby scale, 1cc bld/clot = 1 gram.
And yeah...some Doc's do fudge. It seems like they take blood loss as a personal insult just like poor apgars.
KMP77
50 Posts
Is that what the Drs and nurses do, just estimate? Or is there a way to see how much blood a pt lost? That has always confused me lol. What is the *norm* EBL? Or is there no norm?