More women dying from pregnancy complications; state holds on to report

[spotbird]

Changes in the population – obese mothers, older mothers and fertility treatments – cannot completely account for the rise in deaths in California, said Dr. Elliott Main, the principal investigator for the task force.

....

Nearly one in three babies is now born by C-section. Many scientists have acknowledged that at some point, as the number of surgeries spiral upward, the risks will outweigh the benefits. But the C-section remains a useful tool, and in the middle of labor, doctors say, it’s hard to balance the potential long-term harm against immediate crisis.

Today, doctors face a condition called placenta accreta, where the placenta grows into the scar left by a previous C-section. In surgery, doctors must find and suture a web of twisted placental vessels snaking into the patient’s abdomen, which can hemorrhage alarming amounts of blood. Often, doctors must remove the uterus.

.....

In 2002, Dr. David Lagrew, the medical director of the Women’s Hospital at Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Orange County, noticed that a lot of women were having their labor induced before term without a medical reason. And he knew that having an induction doubled the chances of a C-section.

So he set a rule: no elective inductions before 41 weeks of pregnancy, with only a few exceptions. As a result, Lagrew said, the operating room schedules opened up, and the hospital saw fewer babies admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit, fewer hemorrhages and fewer hysterectomies.

http://www.californiawatch.org/health-and-welfare/more-women-dying-pregnancy-complications-state-holds-report

[AspenRose]

1. Question for anyone who can answer it:

Why are minority women more likely to suffer complications and death than white women of comparable economic status? That's a sincere question and I would like some insight.

"In 2006, 95 California women died from causes directly related to their pregnancies – out of more than 500,000 live births. That’s a small number by public health standards. If California had met the goal set by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to bring the state’s maternal mortality rate down to a level achieved by other countries, the number of dead would be closer to 28.

It’s not clear who is most at risk, but researchers have long known that African-American mothers are between three and four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than the rest of the population. **That racial association is not stratified by socio-economic status: Even high-income black women are at a greater risk.**

While the maternal mortality rate among black women is rising, the task force found a more dramatic increase in deaths among white, non-Hispanic mothers. There is not yet enough data to show if the risk of death is associated with poverty."

[dalaigh lllama]

2. That bit about induced labor is something I've always suspected

Almost everyone I know whose doctor induced labor ended up having a C-section.