Maternal Mortality Rates Rising in California (shot up 3X over last decade); Most Deaths Preventable

[heli]

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/changing-life-preventing-maternal-mortality/story?id=9914009

Maternal Mortality Rates Rising in California
New Study Shows More Women are Dying After Childbirth, but Most Deaths are Preventable
By KATE SNOW and SARAH AMOS
March 4, 2010

It is something we take for granted in the United States. A woman enters the hospital to give birth and she emerges a couple of days later with a beautiful bundle of joy. That is how it usually goes. But this story is about the rare exception -- women who die within 42 days of childbirth. In the health care community it's called simply "maternal mortality." And in the U.S., many experts believe it is on the rise.

According to the World Health Organization, the U.S. ranks behind more than 40 other countries when it comes to maternal death rates, with 11 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies when measured in 2005. More women die in the U.S. after giving birth than die in countries including Poland, Croatia, Italy and Canada, to name a few.

A new report out of California found the number of women who died in the state after giving birth has nearly tripled over the past decade, from 5.6 deaths per 100,000 to 16.9 per 100,000 in 2006. The report was commissioned by the California Department of Health but has not yet been publically released. ABC News first learned of its existence from a watchdog group called "California Watch."

Death after childbirth is still rare, but experts say many of those deaths could have been prevented. "We've been able to double-check the data so we can truly say there is a rise," said Dr. Elliott Main, chairman of the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative, which worked on the report. "Most women died from hemorrhage, from deep vein thrombosis or blood clots, and from -- this is the surprise -- from underlying cardiac disease," added Main...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just like the Third World.

[Duer 157099]

1. Does 16 years after childbirth count?

I feel like I'll be adding to that California statistic

[gkhouston]

9. I don't think a teenager making your head explode counts. n/t

[spotbird]

12. It should. nt

[nashville_brook]

2. DVT is terrifying...you feel like your body is conspiring against you...and, it is.

[AwakeAtLast]

3. A friend of mine lived - but it was close

Had she been alone when an aneurysm burst, she would be dead. Then they found the 12 inch ( :wow: ) blood clot. After brain surgery, she is a walking, talking miracle!

[Hannah Bell]

4. I'm reccing this because I think this is an important indicator of where we are.

Health & longevity indicators, for the first time in over a hundred years, are moving down.

And it's about inequality & the concentration of income in the hands of an elite global class.

[indepat]

5. 41st ranking in maternity mortality. 37th ranking in health care. Is there some correlation here?

Wonder if brand new mothers are released from the hospital here quicker than in most countries. At least in the USA the reason for early release serves a noble purpose: higher profits for the insurance companies and huger bonuses for their executives. This is so easy. :shrug:

[CTyankee]

7. I was talking to an American woman who had given birth in Finland 3 years ago.

At the time she was married to a Finnish man. She received excellent prenatal care from a midwife, delivered in a hospital attended by the midwife but with a physician at hand if any problems arose. Her delivery was perfectly normal and her stay would have been 4 days but they wanted her to stay a 5th to make sure her breast feeding was progressing. Then she went home and had postnatal and well baby care from the midwife who made house calls to her home! This woman now lives in the midwest and always speaks out when she hears ignorant Americans blather on about the "evils" of socialized medicine!

[indepat]

8. Four days increased to five. I suspect in a goodly percentage of deaths within 42 days of delivery,

the underlying problem would/could have been identified and addressed during a reasonable hospital stay. :D

[CTyankee]

10. I imagine this kind of thing is unheard of in Scandinavian countries.

So much for the U.S. having the "best health care in the world." The "world" is now laughing at us...

[ensho]

6. the male war against women continues

nt

[spotbird]

13. There are plenty of women

in on it too.

[defendandprotect]

15. Though they are trained in male medical practice, generally by males . . .

However, good that women are in there even if they are following the rubrics

of male medicine -- one day they may all wake up and make Swiss Cheese of

male teaching --

[arbusto_baboso]

11. In California the birth defect rate is spiking, too.

Particularly among the undocumented women who work in agriculture. They're exposed to all the pesticides that are supposedly safe, and more often than not, their children are born with monstrous defects and deformities. I saw this first-hand, working in a California public hospital early in the last decade.

Of course, these are brown people and not American citizens, so no one cares about them, and probably no one counts them in their health survey figures, either.

[Hekate]

14. Underlying cardiac disease? That part sounds more like Western Diet than Third World...

DVT though, is an old enemy: people used to call it "milk leg" and it came to be attributed to having days of enforced bed rest after birth. That's why doctors started advising new mothers to get out of bed and start walking around. They *didn't* mean to resume all activities or fail to get adequate rest, just get the circulation moving again.

Lack of fluids might be a contributing factor -- and lack of timely follow-up. I seem to remember that after I was discharged from the hospital (a big two and a half days in 1975 and 1978), the next time I saw my doctor was for a 6-week checkup. Hmm. 6 weeks = 42 days.

The heartless and profit-driven medical system we are saddled with doesn't allow for adequate pre-natal OR post-natal care, when many health problems could be discovered in time or prevented altogether.

Hekate