Improving perioperative safety through communication and collaboration in prenatal aortic dissection surgery

¶ … safe perioperative practice, it is believed that communication is crucial to providing quality of service. Prenatal surgical patients with Type A aortic dissection require extra special care, using innovative technologies and methods. When acute aortic dissection occurs during pregnancy, both the mother and the fetus are at risk. The problem is relatively rare. Collaboration with an entire medical team is also indicated.

The databases of hundreds of hospitals worldwide were surveyed for statistics on pregnant women admitted who required acute aortic dissection. The participants experienced either Type A or Type B aortic dissections. From these databases, a pool of randomly selected examples was chosen for inclusion in the retrospective research. Researchers obtained informed consent before proceeding to compile twenty case studies.

Results: It was found that women with the Type A dissection were more likely to survive emergency surgery plus a Caesarean section than women with Type B dissection. Moreover, the fetuses were more likely to survive the Caesarian section birth in the situations in which a Type A dissection was indicated. The aortic repair to the mother proceeded after the Caesarean section, but the duration of time between the Caesarian and the aortic repair operation varied from mother to mother. Although only one mother died in the current study, 85% of the fetuses from mothers with Type B dissections perished after the invasive procedures.