A study from Michigan State University has revealed a flaw in current medical guidelines that could put the wellbeing of women and their unborn children at risk. According to the study, many pregnant women with sexually transmitted infections aren’t getting the treatment they need when they visit emergency rooms, which has serious wellness implications.
They study, published in the American Journal of Emergency Medicine, found that, despite the availability of effective and relatively inexpensive antibiotics, roughly half of the 735 women with gonorrhoea or chlamydia who visited the ERs at three hospitals in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from 2008 through 2010 did not get treatment there, and of the 179 who were pregnant, only 20% received treatment in the ER.
According to Roman Krivochenitser, a third-year student in MSU’s College of Human Medicine and lead author of the paper, the issue is that the lab results take a few days to be processed, and many women don’t return for medication. In an ideal world, doctors would be able to confirm a diagnosis and treat the patient while she’s still in the ER, but this isn’t a reality at present. ‘A lot of patients leave a phone number that’s disconnected, or they just don’t pick up the phone. The doctors are doing everything right. It’s just that we don’t yet have the technology for on-the-spot testing,’ Krivochenitser said.
He added that as the symptoms of STIs overlap with signs of pregnancy, it is especially challenging to look after the sexual health of pregnant women. ‘You could do a very thorough workup to find out what’s causing abdominal pain in a pregnant woman, but if you’re pregnant, there’s a certain amount of abdominal discomfort we expect,’ he explained.
The implications of missing a diagnosis are concerning, as it raises your risk of delivering preterm and your baby having a low-birth weight, which could affect their wellness in the long-run. Also, untreated STIs can cause you to develop complications, such as pelvic inflammatory disease, raising the risk of infertility and dangerous ectopic pregnancy. Krivochenitser commented, ‘This is something we as health professionals can easily prevent with antibiotics.’
Therefore, Krivochenitser said it may be time to re-evaluate guidelines from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, which are in place to prevent doctors from over-prescribing antibiotics, which can breed drug-resistant organisms. ‘Still, if we’re looking at the risks and benefits, there’s a more immediate risk of a pregnant patient having gonorrhoea or chlamydia because it can have serious effects on the baby,’ Krivochenitser said. ‘When someone visits their family physician, there may be more time to weigh those risks, but things in the emergency department move twice as fast. We have to make very quick decisions.’
Comments are closed.