Maternal death.....

aus nurse · Jan 3, 2003

We had a maternal death a few years ago at our rural hospital...very very tragic. It was during a caesar and was due to an anaphylaxsis. Mum coded but they got bub out in time.

sbic56, BSN, RN · Jan 3, 2003

http://www3.who.int/whosis/menu.cfm?path=whosis,mm&language=english

Informative link re:maternal death. Interesting to see the numbers worldwide.

mark_LD_RN · Jan 3, 2003

I am thankful it does not happen often. I have personally seen it happen twice ,once was related to trauma not actual birth, last one was a patient who bleed out after delivery and emergency hysterectomy,pt developed DIC never recovered.

Cheerio · Jan 3, 2003

I had a friend die of the same thing Mark mentioned above. She gave birth to a healthy baby girl (4th baby) and just kept bleeding. They couldn't stop it This was last February.

extremebean · Jan 3, 2003

deepoohbear- sorry i can't shed much light on it either, but i also caught some of the buzz on this case and it really got me thinking, too. thought that didn't happen so often..... sounded like a lot of complications all at once in that OR..........

deespoohbear · Jan 3, 2003

I just heard this morning that the young lady passed away yesterday. She was 32 years old. Absolutely rotten thing to happen anytime, but at the holiday season it seems 10 times worse......

mother/babyRN, RN · Jan 3, 2003

I am so sorry for their loss. I just got home from a crazy night. It actually didn't start out horribly, but around 0530 a woman (known to us, though not belonging to us), came in with her 4th episode of bleeding. No previa or abruption was found prior to that. She was over 40 and a fertility pt. She was 32 weeks. The fh dropped and we had to do a c/s under general. She continued to bleed but thankfully, she stabilized and her infant did well and was shipped to a nicu close by..Scary though. I have never had a maternal death during the hospital stay, though we did have a mom die of a PE while breastfeeding a couple of weeks after her lady partsl delivery....It is so scary sometimes....They are angels now......I don't think maternal death is very common, but the possibilty is certainly on my mind every single time....{{{}}}

cindyln · Jan 3, 2003

We just had a lady last month develop DIC. boy was that a scarey situation.

indynurse · Jan 3, 2003

Had a mom a couple of years ago code while getting her epidural placed for her scheduled repeat c-section. Fortunately her mother was in the room talking to her while the anesthesiologist and the nurse were behind her (she was lying on her side) when it happened. The pt said her chest felt a little heavy and as the nurse was reassuring her that some women get that feeling, the pt's mother said "No something is wrong, her lips are turning blue." By the time I got to the code, no one else could have fit into the room. All I could see was one of our OB's doing chest compressions on a woman with a very pregnant belly and legs the color of the ceil blue scrubs I was wearing. They gave her narcan and crash sectioned her and were able to resuscitate her. I had her the next day on postpartum and she was just another typical c-section recovery except she said her chest was a little sore. (Not even a bruise on her chest) Very scary but with a happy ending.

About five years ago we lost a new mom to group A strep who went into toxic shock syndrome. She was a typical SVD no complications, benign prenatal history. The night before she was to go home, she was complaining of some vague UTI sounding symptoms. By morning she had an acute abdomen....terrible pain. By late afternoon she was dead. She had the bacteria in her kidneys, uterus and heart. The incidence of group A strep toxic shock is about 2 in 1 million lady partsl deliveries and the mortatlity rate is about 80%.

renerian, BSN, RN · Jan 3, 2003

Indy nurse my dtr developed TSS last Feb and almost died. She was not pregnant but she scared the dickens out of me. They linked it to tampons.

renerian

SmilingBluEyes · Jan 3, 2003

Do you know, everytime I get off the elevator at work, I tell myself this mantra:

"Be alert and on your toes; someone could die tonight."

May sound a bit over-the-top but as rare as maternal death is, it just takes ONE tragic case in a lifetime to forever change your perspective, your career and life. Just one.