Simple intervention for severe blood loss after childbirth is found to save lives

A simple intervention to detect and treat postpartum haemorrhage could dramatically cut maternal mortality and morbidity worldwide, a large trial led by the University of Birmingham has shown.

Use of a special drape to measure blood loss during childbirth and rapid deployment of a “bundle” of existing treatments reduced severe bleeding, the need for laparotomy, or maternal death by 60% in a study done in 80 hospitals across Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania.

Reporting the results in the New England Journal of Medicine, the researchers said that postpartum haemorrhage was detected in 93.1% of patients in the intervention and in 51.1% of those receiving usual care.

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Source: BMJ, 10 May 2023