Pregnancy-associated Death - Clarifying the Cause of Death and Medico-legal Assessments in Accusations of Malpractice.

Conclusion: The death of a pregnant woman should not automatically raise the suspicion of malpractice, although the question does arise in cases of bleeding complications only detected at very late stages. Experts must prove that a real mistake was made during treatment and provide evidence of the causality between malpractice and patient death. Particularly when well-known complications of pregnancy were present, this is only the case if poor monitoring resulted in the complication being detected too late or if treatment was not in accordance with accepted standards of care. The majority of pregnancy-associated deaths are from natural causes and the death of a pregnant woman does not mean that medical malpractice was involved, although this accusation is often levelled in cases where rupture was not immediately diagnosed or in cases of fatal postpartum hemorrhage. PMID: 29479111 [PubMed - in process]
Source: Geburtshilfe und Frauenheilkunde - Category: OBGYN Tags: Geburtshilfe Frauenheilkd Source Type: research