Why letting a pregnant woman's heart stop could save both her and her baby

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This might very well be a very stupid question, but how is it possible that noone in the history of ER ever thought of this? I mean, if there is one field where it would sound natural to make split-second decisions to try and see if you can save someone it’s this one

Except that this comment is about birth/pregnancy, this doesn’t really have to do with the post. However, any chance you will be live blogging the delivery??? LOL. I actually think that could be a very funny joke piece.

Magic 8 Ball says: Unlikely.

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In situations where I am fault finding I do tend to follow the most serious symptoms and fix them first, rather than focusing on the whole system. Its easy to forget what you started out to do when something serious happens.

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Is not new. Was standard teaching when I was a resident 10 yrs ago. Closed chest CPR gives you about 25% of a normal (NORMAL, NOT PREGNANT) cardiac output. The load on the heart to perfuse the placenta is pretty big; removing it (and the baby) usually will enable subsequent resuscitation efforts to be successful.

Well they can’t exactly run randomized clinical trials, now can they?

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