A cautionary tale for pregnant women

Even a mild fall should be checked, advise Hillel Yaffe Medical Center doctors who saved an Or Akiva resident and her baby.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
pregnant woman 311 (photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [illustrative])
pregnant woman 311
(photo credit: Ariel Jerozolimski [illustrative])
The lives of a pregnant 25- year-old Or Akiva woman – who had a seemingly harmless fall but suffered severe internal hemorrhaging – and her baby were saved a week ago at Hadera’s Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, the hospital recently announced.
The woman, in her 29th week of pregnancy, arrived at the obstetrical emergency room dangerously weak and on the edge of fainting, the hospital said on Tuesday. The doctors immediately noticed that she had suffered from a critical loss of blood and performed emergency surgery to remove her ruptured spleen.
“It’s hard to believe that something I thought was so minor could have caused so much damage,” said the woman, who gave birth at the hospital to a healthy baby girl and has since recovered.
“She was exhausted,” said her husband, who had rushed her to the emergency room. “Her face was completely pale and she almost didn’t react.”
When she was connected to a monitor, midwife Gila Pinhasov saw that the fetus was in trouble.
“It was clear that she was at risk of dying and was taken for immediate surgery,” Pinhasov said.
The couple had gone to a performance in Caesarea, and at the entrance the wife complained about a stomach ache.
“At first,” the husband said, “we thought she had gone into labor. She screamed and begged that I take her to the hospital. A medical team on the spot called a mobile intensive care unit that ‘flew’ to Hillel Yaffe.”
In the surgical theater, surgeons found that her placenta had separated from the wall of her uterus, a condition that can be critical to the life of the mother and fetus. A team of experts was alerted and it found that the source of the bleeding was the spleen.
In a three-hour operation, the spleen was removed and the premature baby was delivered.
During the surgery the woman received 10 units of blood. Both the mother and baby are now in good condition.
The next day, the mother opened her eyes and asked to see the baby. A week after the traumatic event, she is recovering in the surgery B department, tired and weak but with a smile on her face.
The mother recalled that she had slipped in a small puddle of water and fallen on her knee. “I didn’t think that for that I had to go to the doctor. The whole pregnancy so far was normal. I went by the book,” she said.
Dr. Haim David, who treated her, said that “the lesson from this story is that any fall or blow to a woman during pregnancy should be dealt with seriously, with a doctor’s examination. Even if you think it’s nothing, be alert and go for a checkup,” he advised.