Successful Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation in Pregnancy: A Case Report

Abstract

The management of cardiac arrest in pregnancy is an important task for the emergency physicians. The clinical outcome of mother or fetus will often depend on the successful resuscitation of the first few minutes. Furthermore, the resuscitation team leader should consider the necessity of emergency hysterotomy (cesarean delivery) as soon as a pregnant woman develops cardiac arrest. We report a case of a 28-year-old pregnant woman who had a ventricular fibrillation cardiac arrest. She was successfully resuscitated in our emergency department and a single male healthy infant was delivered via cesarean section at 36 weeks' gestation. Mother and baby were discharged survival and neurologically intact from the intensive care unit (ICU) on day 25. We emphasize that understanding the causes of cardiac arrest during pregnancy, its early recognition and prompt resuscitation by recent ACLS guidelines may decrease both maternal and fetal morbidity or mortality.




doi:10.4021/jocmr2010.02.257w