(Press-News.org) AURORA, Colo. (Jan. 5, 2011) – The number of women who die from complications of anesthesia during childbirth has plummeted 59 percent over the last two decades thanks to improved monitoring and better medical techniques, according to a recent study.
The report's lead researcher, Joy Hawkins, MD, professor of anesthesiology and director of Obstetric Anesthesia at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said the risks have been dramatically reduced due to a greater focus on eliminating complications of general anesthesia.
Hawkins examined 12 years of anesthesia-related maternal deaths from 1991 to 2002 and compared them to similar data from 1979 to 1990. She found there were three deaths per million live births from 1979 to 1990, compared to about one death per million live births from 1991 to 2002.
The study, published in the January 2011 issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology, pointed out that while the numbers of women dying under general anesthesia has decreased, those dying under regional anesthetic – spinals and epidurals – have risen slightly to about 3.8 out of every million receiving the anesthesia.
"We focused our attention on the riskier technique – general anesthesia – and we brought those risks down," Hawkins said. "But we should not be complacent about our success. Having said that, one maternal death per million is an incredible safety record."
Historically, women have had a higher chance of dying under general anesthesia during childbirth. Many of those deaths occurred while undergoing cesarean sections.
During the 1970s and 80s, 17 women died under general anesthesia for every one death under regional anesthesia. By the 1990s, that ratio dropped to six to one.
"General anesthesia now seems just as safe as a spinal or epidural for cesarean section," Hawkins said.
According to the study, the decline in deaths under general anesthesia is due to, among other things, better monitoring, new methods of dealing with difficult airways and more advanced breathing devices.
The uptick in deaths caused by regional anesthesia is still not fully understood.
"More awareness is being focused on maintaining safety by paying attention to technique and assuring availability of emergency equipment," Hawkins said.
Still, she noted, the risk of death under general or regional anesthesia is remarkably low.
"Obstetric anesthesiologists have focused their efforts and attention on areas of concern, accomplished notable improvements in outcomes and will continue to do so," she said.
###
Faculty at the University of Colorado Denver's School of Medicine work to advance science and improve care. These faculty members include physicians, educators and scientists at University of Colorado Hospital, The Children's Hospital, Denver Health, National Jewish Health, and the Denver Veterans Affairs Medical Center. Degrees offered by the UC Denver School of Medicine include doctor of medicine, doctor of physical therapy, and masters of physician assistant studies. The School is located on the University of Colorado's Anschutz Medical Campus, one of four campuses in the University of Colorado system. For additional news and information, please visit the UC Denver newsroom online.
END
Scientists have discovered direct evidence of the diet of one of the most important group of ammonites, distant relatives of squids, octopuses and cuttlefishes. The discovery may bring a new insight on why they became extinct 65.5 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous.
Ammonites are among the world's most well known fossils but until now, there has been no experimental evidence of their place in the food chain. Using synchrotron X-rays, a Franco-American team of scientists led by Isabelle Kruta has discovered exceptionally preserved mouth organs of ammonites, ...
Powerful synchrotron scans of Baculites fossils found on American Museum of Natural History expeditions to the Great Plains suggests that the extinct group of marine invertebrates to which they belong, the ammonites, had jaws and teeth adapted for eating small prey floating in the water. One ammonite also provided direct evidence of a planktonic diet because it died with its last meal in its mouth—tiny larval snails and crustacean bits. The detailed description of internal structure of ammonites, published by a Franco-American research team this week in Science, also provides ...
Nanotechnologists at The University of Texas at Dallas have invented a broadly deployable technology for producing weavable, knittable, sewable, and knottable yarns containing up to 95 weight percent of otherwise unspinnable guest powders and nanofibers. A minute amount of host carbon nanotube web, which can be lighter than air and stronger pound-per-pound than steel, confines guest particulates in the corridors of highly conducting scrolls without interfering with guest functionality for such applications as energy storage, energy conversion, and energy harvesting.
Using ...
If you want to be surrounded by females on the prowl, it pays to be cool, at least if you are a male butterfly.
In an unusual example of sex role reversals, females actively court males after being exposed to cool, dry temperatures as caterpillars, Yale University researchers report in the Jan. 7 issue of the journal Science. Raised in the moist and warmer season as larvae, males take up the traditional roles of suitor, displaying their wing designs to females who do the choosing.
"Behavior in these butterflies is changed by the temperatures experienced during development," ...
Most of the time cancer seems to creep up gradually over time; cells become premalignant, then increasingly abnormal before they become cancerous. But sometimes cancers seem to pop up as if out of nowhere. Now, researchers reporting in the January 7th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication, have new evidence to explain how that can happen. Based on the DNA sequences of multiple cancer samples of various types, they show that cancer can arise suddenly in the aftermath of one-off cellular crises involving tens to hundreds of genomic rearrangements.
"We think ...
Using a new technology that relies on thousands of synthetic molecules to fish for disease-specific antibodies, researchers have developed a potential method for detecting Alzheimer's disease with a simple blood test. The same methodology might lead to blood tests for many important diseases, according to the report in the January 7th issue of the journal Cell, a Cell Press publication.
"If this works in Alzheimer's disease, it suggests it is a pretty general platform that may work for a lot of different diseases," said Thomas Kodadek of The Scripps Research Institute. ...
Most primary care physicians (PCPs) and kidney specialists favor collaborative care for a patient with progressive chronic kidney disease (CKD), but their preferences on how and when to collaborate differ, according to a study appearing in an upcoming issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology (CJASN). PCPs and kidney specialists need to partner more effectively to optimize care for patients with CKD.
Prompt referral of patients to kidney specialists can slow CKD progression or help patients prepare for dialysis or kidney transplantation in a timely ...
BOULDER—One of the most enduring mysteries in solar physics is why the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is millions of degrees hotter than its surface. Now scientists believe they have discovered a major source of hot gas that replenishes the corona: narrow jets of plasma, known as spicules, shooting up from just above the Sun's surface. The finding addresses a fundamental question in astrophysics: how energy moves from the Sun's interior to create its hot outer atmosphere.
"It's always been quite a puzzle to figure out why the Sun's atmosphere is hotter than its surface," ...
LA JOLLA, CA-In making your pro-longevity resolutions, like drinking more red wine and maintaining a vibrant social network, here's one you likely forgot: dialing down your mitochondria. It turns out that slowing the engines of these tiny cellular factories could extend your life-an observation relevant not only to aging research but to our understanding of how cells communicate with each another.
So report researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the Jan. 7, 2011, issue of Cell. Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Andrew Dillin, Ph.D., and ...
For the first time, researchers have developed a 3D picture of a herpes virus protein interacting with a key part of the human cellular machinery, enhancing our understanding of how it hijacks human cells to spread infection and opening up new possibilities for stepping in to prevent or treat infection. This discovery uncovers one of the many tactical manoeuvres employed by the virus.
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)-funded team, led by The University of Manchester, have used NMR - a technique related to the one used in MRI body scanners ...
