Maternal mortality among women with coronavirus disease 2019 admitted to the intensive care unit
OBJECTIVE:Limited data are available on critically ill pregnant women hospitalized with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Although maternal mortality has been reported, 1e3 the frequency with which this devastating outcome occurs is unknown. The objective of this study was to determine the rate of maternal death among pregnant and postpartum women with COVID-19 admitted to the intensive care units (ICUs) in a large integrated health system in the New York metropolitan area. In this study, we described patient demographics, baseline comorbidities, clinical presentation, hospital course, and maternal outcomes.
STUDY DESIGN:This case series evaluated all consecutively hospitalized pregnant and immediately postpartum women with laboratory-confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 who were admitted to the ICUs at 10 hospitals within Northwell Health, the largest academic health system in New York, and Maimonides Medical Center, an affiliate of Northwell Health in Brooklyn, NY, from March 1, 2020, to May 6, 2020. Collectively, these hospitals perform approximately 40,000 deliveries per year, representing about 1 in 6 births in the state of New York and 1% of all births in the United States. Respiratory specimens were collected using nasopharyngeal swabs. Symptomatic patients who received positive test results for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay were included. Admission to the ICU was at the discretion of the consulted critical care attending physician at each site. Patients who had a critical care consultation but were not directly managed by an intensivist were not included.
Significant sampling error occurs regardless of the type of core biopsy device, number of specimens obtained, histologic-radiographic concordance, mammographic appearance, and complete excision of the lesion as determined by imaging. For this reason, all patients with lobular neoplasia at core or vacuum-assisted biopsy should undergo surgical excision until further differentiating criteria can be determined.
AbstractThe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has placed great demands on many hospitals to maximize their capacity to care for affected patients. The requirement to reassign space has created challenges for obstetric services. We describe the nature of that challenge for an obstetric service in New York City. This experience raised an ethical challenge: whether it would be consistent with professional integrity to respond to a public health emergency with a plan for obstetric services that would create an increased risk of rare maternal mortality. We answered this question using the conceptual tools of professional ethics in obstetrics, especially the professional virtue of integrity. A public health emergency requires frameshifting from an individual-patient perspective to a population-based perspective. We show that an individual-patient-based, beneficence-based deliberative clinical judgment is not an adequate basis for organizational policy in response to a public health emergency. Instead, physicians, especially those in leadership positions, must frameshift to population-based clinical ethical judgment that focuses on reduction of mortality as much as possible in the entire population of patients served by a healthcare organization.
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