Dangerous Bleeding After Giving Birth Can Be Prevented

Specialists indicate that new mothers can prevent dangerous bleeding after their child is born with an inexpensive treatment which is also used for car crash victims and wounded soldiers. Postpartum hemorrhage was proved to kill approximately 100,000 women every year in middle-income and poor countries. This dangerous bleeding determines many doctors to undergo emergency hysterectomies when their hospital has little blood for transfusions.

Postpartum hemorrhages can be stopped by using tranexamic acid

Researchers developed a six-year trial which surveyed more than 20,000 women coming from 21 countries. Scientists demonstrated that tranexamic acid, which is a blood-clutter developed in the 1950s, helped them reduce the number of maternal bleeding deaths by a third. If the vaccine were administrated within three hours after a new mother started bleeding, then it would save her.

The trial was named Woman, short for World Maternal Antifibrinolytic and was conducted by doctors at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The medical trial was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Pfizer, Britain’s health department and the Wellcome Trust. The results of the trial were released on April 26 in The Lancet.

A dangerous bleeding could jeopardize the life of a new mother

Haleema Shakur, one of the lead authors of the study, indicated that tranexamic acid could save new mothers. The World Health Organization also provides some useful advice in case of dangerous bleeding after giving birth. They recommend massaging the uterus and then injecting oxytocin meant to shrink the uterus. Nevertheless, tranexamic acid functions differently, allowing the blood to clot at a faster pace.

Dr. Ian Roberts, one of the lead authors of the study, suggested that this drug should be administrated in addition to the usual treatment for postpartum hemorrhage. He also claimed that new mothers tend to die very quickly due to these unpremeditated bleedings, especially in Africa, where females are anemic. Half of the women in Africa who give birth, start off with less than half of the red blood cells they need to have to face an unexpected bleeding.

Most of the people who have such a low level of hemoglobin could even die. Doctors need to do everything that stands in their power to save such women, and they need to do it quickly since they could die immediately because of a low level of red cells. Sometimes, emergency hysterectomies manage to save some lives, but the bad news is that those females will never be able to have another child again.

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