Article Sidebar
Article Details
The entire contents of the Tropical Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology are protected under Indian and international copyrights. The Journal, however, grants to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, perform and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works in any digital medium for any reasonable non-commercial purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship and ownership of the rights. The journal also grants the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal non-commercial use.
This journal content is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as the author is credited and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.
Main Article Content
Pathology of Abortion-Related Deaths in Port Harcourt Nigeria
Abstract
Objective: To describe autopsy features observed in patients who died from abortion and its complications in a tertiary health centre in Nigeria.
Study Design, Setting and Subjects: The data was obtained from an autopsy study of coroner's cases whose deaths occurred after abortions over a sixteen-year period. The antecedent clinical data were obtained from the patients' case notes.
Results: Of the 81 autopsies done following maternal deaths during the study period, 38 were abortion- related. The deaths followed 15 and 23 first and second trimester abortions respectively. Majority of the victims (68.3%) were aged between 15 and 29 years. The identified major causes of death were septic shock (50% of cases), haemorrhagic shock (26.3%), anaemic heart failure (13.2%) and peritonitis (10.5%). People with no formal health care training were responsible for procuring abortion in 57.9% of the cases.
Conclusion: Mortality from abortion is usually preceded by septic or haemorrhagic shock. Aggressive resuscitative measures may help to salvage some of the patients, but the social and economic factors driving the increasing rates of unsafe abortions in the society must be tackled to reduce abortion-related maternal mortality significantly.
Key Words: Abortion, Maternal Mortality, Autopsy.
[Trop J Obstet Gynaecol, 2002, 19: 104-106]
