Unplanned home births

[Livinthedream]

Is there a reason why you have to cut the cord? why not leave it intact? Surely leaving the baby to an oxygen source if it has poor apgars would be the best course of action. In some hospitals they actually have special resuscitation tables that allow the baby to be resuscitated whilst cord attached as evidence has suggested this to be the best for baby. And in speaking to midwives where they don't have these 'special' tables they say there is no reason baby cannot be resuscitated while cord attached. Not judging just curious why poor apgars would make you sever a cord that is supplying an excellent supply of blood and oxygen, especially onside ring there is a lot of evidence and studies to support this now. Maybe paramedic education needs to be updated on this, actually I think in some hospital setting this needs to be updated also.

I would have thought that trying to resuscitate a baby in the back of a moving ambulance with an external blood supply attached to it would be quite dangerous. What if the cord tears or breaks? Then you have a non breathing bleeding baby.

[HotI]

my experience is only following car accidents, but if they need to do resuscitation it happens before the person is transported.

[nickle730]

my experience is only following car accidents, but if they need to do resuscitation it happens before the person is transported.

Hey HotI, we often continue resuscitation efforts en route to hospital - in the case that there are any signs of life (a person in cardiac arrest often still makes some respiratory effort, for example), drug overdose, hypothermia, drowning, children or where the family requests that resuscitation efforts continue are some of the scenarios where we would likely continue resus during transport. A person who is in cardiac arrest due to a traumatic cause is less likely to be successfully resuscitated, but we still often continue resus efforts on these patients en route to hospital. We only cease - or don't begin - resuscitation when our efforts are clearly futile or if it is a case of an obvious death (rigor mortis, lividity, decapitation etc.).

Sorry for the multiple responses to other posts, I don't know how to respond to multiple posts in one go.