Maternal death.....

Specialties Ob/Gyn

Published

I do not work L & D, or post partum...so my knowledge base for this is nill....

Through our church prayer chain the other day came a prayer request for a young family in our area. A baby was born, and for some reason the mother suffered a cardiac arrest post delivery (I think the delivery may have been a section and the baby 34 weeks gestation). The baby is doing well, but prognosis for Mom is dismal....:o Just how common is maternal death? This is a young family with the Mom receiving good prenatal care. This is the third case in 5 years that I know about that resulted in maternal death. One of the deaths was a nursing school classmate of mine that died after we had graduated from nursing school. I don't know any of the specifics for the situation I posted about but I am just interested in how common maternal death is nowadays...Thanks...

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.

Every time I have a patient or family complain about the nurses are "bothering" her too much, I want to tell them this. I try very hard to not interfere with this family event, but I have had a few "near miss" patients and I was there the day the postpartum mom died from the Group A Strep infection. I NEVER want to see that happen again. While in that case, I don't think anything could have been done differently to change the outcome (it's just one mean bug that usually looks like something much less serious at first) there are many things we can pick up on early enough to ensure a positive outcome.

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Specializes in cardiac, diabetes, OB/GYN.

I ask God every night on the way to work to please give us a safe outcome....Somehow He manages to come through one way or the other most of the time. Such as when there were only three of us working ( one for each area) despite the fact that we had patients on pp and the nursery with a laboring pt....Nothing ever happens in delivery, right?

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Specializes in cardiac, diabetes, OB/GYN.

That particular night a we had a good delivery and after I admitted the baby and gave it a bath, a 32 week abruption came in by ambulance, requiring an emergency c/s. Luckily this was all happening just as the day shift was arriving so there were more of us than there would have been ( including the or and pacu and anesthesia) because of that. Good thing, as it was done under general. What might have happened had the timing not been as it was? I shudder to think of what might have been....

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Heard a little more today about this case. (I want to make it clear that I do not work for the hospital that this happened at, nor am I involved in anyway in this case except for prayer support for the family...) Anyhow....

Evidently there was some kind of problem with anesthesia and/or intubation of the mother...something went terribly wrong....Mother was buried today....baby at home doing well....

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Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

how very sad. I am sorry to hear this.

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Originally posted by sbic56

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

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

Interesting link... some of those numbers are scary!! Like a 1 in 6 chance of lifetime maternal death. WOW

Our maternity book says that in the US the maternal mortality rate in 1992 was 7.3/1000 and that non-white women have a 3 times greater incidence of death.

Pretty Scary stuff...

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I did find out today that the young woman's family had the courage to donate her organs...hopefully someday her son will know what a treasure his family gave to others....

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