The report on the maternal death of a 17-year-old, whose 28-week-old baby died at the Georgetown Public Hospital, has indicated that the circumstances surrounding her death was due to poor management of the situation, says Public Health Minister Dr George Norton.
Public Health Minister, Dr George Norton
Norton stated that the report has recommended that the physician who operated should be sent for advance training. According to the Minister, the situation could have been avoided if the doctor had ordered a CT scan or an ECG when the teen fainted at the hospital.
The teen’s premature baby was delivered via Caesarean Section. The doctors had given up hope of the critically-ill teenager surviving.
The teen’s mother explained that she was told by doctors that the cause of her daughter’s condition was due to an ailment she was born with, known as Brain Arteriovenous Malformation (AMV), which is a tangle of abnormal blood vessels connecting veins in the brain.
As the child grows older, the chance of succumbing to the ailment also increases, since any slight pressure could cause the vein to rupture, leading to haemorrhaging and stroke.
The mother said that after the teen became pregnant her condition caused her to constantly vomit, which caused the cell to break and initiated the bleeding. The teen then experienced a stroke on her right side 28 weeks into the pregnancy. However, an emergency Caesarean (C-Section) was done to save the teen’s unborn child.
