Spinal hematoma

[Qwiigley, BSN, MSN, DNP, RN, CRNA]

Yesterday, one of the L&D nurses was talking about an OB patient post delivery/c-sec that had a hematoma from a spinal and was paralyzed (different hospital, so I don't know the details).

My question is, will this resolve? Is this always permanent? I know what the books say, what have you seen in real life? What would you do to treat this if anything? Can it be vacuated under fluoro?

Under the same idea, what limit do you use in practice for platelet values as a cut off for spinal/epidurals? Our group practice dictates >100.

[pink2blue1]

Oh my gosh, how wierd that I come her and read this. I have a friend (this is NON ob related) who went to the ER for the flu and the Dr in the ER decided to do a spinal tap to check for menigitis, even though my friend had no signs (She had high fever and chills) for some reason she had a CT head (I think it was because she had a migraine, which she is prone to getting a lot) he said that the " her brain color looked off on the CT" and that is why she had the spinal tap. Anyways she went home later that night and couldn't even move one of her legs and the other was in severe pain. This was about 2 weeks or so ago. She called to get an appt back at the Dr and they couldn't see her. So she went to a local ER (She has a type of insurance where you only go to their Dr's ER etc, don't want to say the name) anyways she ended up having an MRI Sunday and they called her Monday saying that it was serious. She had a Spinal Hematoma and they wanted to do surgery yesterday. She said no way, not by those people. Well as we speak she is in surgery having the hematoma evacuated! They told her they don't know if she will ever walk like she used to. So sad. So yes I guess it can be evacuated.