We present a case of a 28-year-old primiparous woman with facial swelling followed by acute chest pain immediately after delivery. Chest radiograph revealed pneumomediastinum and surgical emphysema. She recovered well within 24 h of observation and conservative management. Postpartum spontaneous pneumomediastinum should be considered in the differential diagnosis of sudden-onset postpartum chest pain immediately or a few hours after delivery. It is a rare benign condition and usually resolves spontaneously without serious consequences. Chest X-ray is the single most important diagnostic test. It is important to rule out other serious and life-threatening conditions. Prolonged pushing, difficult labour and use of inhalational drugs place young primiparous women at higher risk. Recurrence is uncommon in subsequent pregnancy and management is unclear, although expectant management with epidural analgaesia to prevent recurrence in subsequent pregnancy is suggested.

Recently, it has been demonstrated that heat-induced male sterility is likely to shape population persistence as climate change progresses. However, an under-explored possibility is that females may be able to successfully store and preserve sperm at temperatures that sterilise males, which could ameliorate the impact of male infertility on populations. Here, we test whether females from two fruit fly species can protect stored sperm from a high temperature stress. We find that sperm carried by female Drosophila virilis are almost completely sterilised by high temperatures, whereas sperm carried by female Zaprionus indianus show only slightly reduced fertility. Heat-shocked D. virilis females can recover fertility when allowed to remate, suggesting that the delivered heat-shock is destroying stored sperm and not directly damaging females in this species. The temperatures required to reduce fertility of mated females are substantially lower than the temperatures required to destroy mature sperm in males, suggesting that females are worse than males at protecting mature sperm. This suggests that female sperm storage is unlikely to ameliorate the impacts of high temperature fertility losses in males, and instead exacerbates fertility costs of high temperatures, representing an important determinant of population persistence during climate change.