Has anyone noticed how many ARDS/pregnancy stories there are?
This is something that I have noticed for years, the number of women who get ARDS right before or right after giving birth. I do not know the 'whys' of this, but it is something that I continually see. After hearing all of these stories, I felt compelled to see if there was any info relating to ARDS & pregnancy and I did find some. I never thought that when I was having kids, ARDS was a potential risk but sometimes it does seem that anyone who is hospitalized for just about anything, is at risk.
posted by ARDS Survivor @ 4:13 PM
4 Comments:
I just found this article and it should reassure pregnant women regarding the small number of complications that are critical in naqture and it discusses ARDS with the pregnant woman in detail
http://ajrccm.atsjournals.org/cgi/content/full/163/5/1051
Here are just a few of the stories that I have heard:
http://ardsusa.org/ARDSstories5.htm#dianerasa
http://ardsusa.org/ARDSstories3.htm#danaraymer
http://ardsusa.org/ARDSstories2.htm#nicolemilbury
http://ardsusa.org/ARDSstories3.htm#candi
http://ardsusa.org/ARDSstories3.htm#kristyshultz
http://ardsusa.org/ARDSstories4.htm#sarasiak
Here is a link to some info about ARDS & pregnancy:
http://ardsusa.org/resources.htm#pregnancy
I would be interested if anyone who has seen ARDS close up and personal, personally or in a loved one, worries when going to have a baby or when a loved one goes to the hospital to have a baby...
I just read this interesting article about IVF and ARDS; before I got ARDS, I was not doing IVF but was taking clomid. Some months I would have as many as eight follicles. A friend of mine, a pediatrician, told me that she thought it could have been from taking that: Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS).
I do not know this and I was never really diagnosed but I did have lower back pain for about five days before I have intense pain in my lungs. And my first complication was kidney failure the same night I was admitted to the ICU. Don't know, but it makes one think...
Source URL: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/apr/05041408.html
LifeSiteNews.com
Thursday April 14, 2005
UK Death Linked to IVF Treatment
LONDON, April 14, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Another victim has died two days after beginning in vitro fertilization treatment, due to the allegedly rare side effect associated with in vitro fertilization treatments known as Ovarian Hyperstimulation Syndrome (OHSS).
Temilola Akinbolagbe, 33, collapsed at a bus stop – she was disconnected from life support five days later, after reportedly suffering a massive heart attack. The heart attack followed after a blot clot formed, associated with the hormonal treatments used to stimulate egg maturation. Doctors say the potentially fatal form of OHSS occurs in one percent of women, although a less severe form of the condition affects as many as 20 percent of women undergoing in vitro treatments.
Following an inquest, Akinbolagbe’s death was ruled “medical misadventure.” Akinbolagbe isn't the first casualty of IVF – Jacqueline Rushton, a 32 year-old Dublin woman, died last year as the result of Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome arising as a complication of OHSS.
The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported a death from intra-cranial hemorrhage (a type of stroke) in a woman following IVF-induced OHSS, in 1996. A Medline search revealed that a death also occurred in New Zealand in 1995 resulting from an OHSS-triggered blood clot to the brain. Two cases of non-fatal stroke were also reported, with both women left with paralysis, following IVF treatment. Two heart attacks are reported in the literature, as were 20 cases of thrombosis (a life-threatening blood clot) of the internal jugular vein in the Medline search results. The formation of blood clots is a major cause of strokes and heart attacks. One such blood clot resulted in the necessary amputation of a woman's forearm.
Dr. Dianne N. Irving, a graduate of The Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, has warned numerous panels of scientists and politicians for many years that the practices of most fertility treatments are unethical, dangerous to women and children and amount to the use of patients, without their consent, as human test subjects.
IVF results in a higher rate of miscarriage than regular pregnancies, at eight percent of established pregnancies, and that “ectopic pregnancies are regular occurrences.” Risk of premature births are also much greater, especially for multiple babies. Fifteen case reports of ascites, a dangerous retention of fluid within the abdomen, have been reported. In most cases, several litres of fluid had to be drained surgically. Fluid retention was also reportedly the reason why one woman went into shock, a second developed pleurisy, an acute inflammation of the lung, and three others had potentially fatal hydrothorax, or water on the lung.
Two cases of liver failure resulting from IVF treatments have been detailed. Adult respiratory distress syndrome was also reported. A study from France revealed a significantly increased trend for women undergoing IVF to require hospitalization for ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. In addition, an Israeli study warned that IVF caused “Increased rates of perinatal mortality [death of baby] and morbidity resulting from prematurity, and higher rates of maternal diseases in pregnancy (preeclampsia, diabetes mellitus, bleeding, anemia) contributing to fetal intra-uterine growth restriction and maternal morbidity [death of mother].”
Pope John Paul II described IVF as “a technology that wants to substitute true paternity and maternity and therefore that does harm to the dignity of parents and children alike.”
I just received a call from a woman who wanted to purchase one of the ARDS awareness bracelets. I asked what her connection to ARDS was and she said that five years ago, she got it after a kidney infection, then sepsis, then ARDS while pregnant. Luckily, her baby survived, at a little over a pound, and now is an active five year old. Miracles do happen...
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