Know These Signs: Maternal Early Warning Criteria Proposed Troy Brown, RN September 10, 2014 Almost half of maternal deaths in the United States, France, and United Kingdom are preventable and result from delays in recognition, diagnosis, and treatment of hemorrhage, hypertension, infection, and venous thrombosis. Now, the National Partnership for Maternal Safety has proposed criteria for an early warning system. The partnership presents the new Maternal Early Warning Criteria in a commentary published online September 5 in Obstetrics & Gynecology. Jill M. Mhyre, MD, from the Department of Anesthesiology, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, and colleagues developed the guidelines on behalf of the National Partnership for Maternal Safety. Using a consensus-based approach, they identified a list of abnormal parameters that require urgent evaluation and escalation of care if needed. In obstetric patients, the early signs of life-threatening illness can be difficult to recognize because critical illness is relatively rare, normal pregnancy and childbirth can generate significant changes in maternal vital signs, and healthy women have substantial physiologic reserve to compensate for pathologic derangements, they explain. The system is a single-parameter scoring system that includes assessment of heart rate (120 beats per minute), systolic blood pressure (160 mm Hg), diastolic blood pressure (>100 mm Hg), respiratory rate (30 breaths per minute), oxygen saturation on room air at sea level (
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 11:16:13 +0000
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