The vaginal infection may go unnoticed until it reaches the placenta. Yes, antibiotics can be used but when sepsis sets in, the pregnancy also has to be delivered for adequate treatment (classic case in when the membranes rupture early and the baby is not yet at a viable age). The point being made by the poster above, which started me off on this tangent is that the primary organ causing the pathology is what must be treated.
Correct, as I understand it.
Following this line of reasoning, you could only give antibiotics for an unruptured, infected ectopic pregnancy or for an undelivered infected pregnancy in the uterus since the primary cause of the problem is infection carried in the blood or present in the vagina. The progression of the infection to tube or uterus are secondary processes are they not?
Ok wait. For a ectopic pregnancy, the ectopic pregnancy (or the failure of the fallopian tube to usher out the embryo into the utuerus) is the primary diagnosis, and the fallopian tube’s removal is the treatment approved by the Church. Note that this is not the only medically approved treatment for ectopic pregnancy (and I know you already know that Seekerz).
If for whatever reason, this ectopic pregnancy is not treated properly, and an infection results, that would be an infection secondary to a tubal pregnancy, but that doesn’t mean that the infection cannot be treated by anything else other than antibiotics. The tube should have already been removed, and still has to be removed. The Church thankfully does not require the tube to rupture and the woman be on her deathbed bleeding out in order to remove the tube. Once a diagnosis of tubal pregnancy is made, the tube can be removed. In this case of an infection resulting from a tubal pregnancy, the tube still has to be removed, and then the patient treated for the infection.
What is not allowed by the Church is removing the embryo from the tube, and saving the tube, because that would be a direct action on the embryo, which they don’t allow. The tube has to come out along with the embryo, thereby making loss of the embryo secondary and the removal of the damaged tube primary.
Therefore, if there is an advanced infection to anywhere in the reproductive tract, and the treatment is to remove the infected tissue, that includes the fallopian tubes and/or uterus…you just can’t remove the fetus, and then treat the infection to the tissues with antibiotic. If your life-saving treatment is to remove fallopian tubes, or ovaries or a uterus, then that has to come out, and is allowed by the Church.
But you can’t remove these tissues with a fetus inside if that’s not the correct treatment. For example, if you have lung cancer, you can’t just remove the uterus along with a lung just because the woman is pregnant. See what I mean? If your patient is septic, you can’t just remove the fetus, you have to remove the infected tissue and then treat the infection.
Following the same argument, if cancer spreads to the pregnant uterus from a different organ, it probably wouldn’t be licit to remove that either, so the classic example of cancer in a pregnant uterus would have to take into account where the primary process began.
No, if a uterus is cancerous, whether it was the origin or whether it spread there from another organ, the cancerous uterus can be removed regardless if the woman is pregnant or not – according to the rules of the Church. Just because the cancer spread there, doesn’t mean it’s secondary. It’s still cancer…it just spread there after it started somewhere else. This is because the cancerous uterus is being removed because it is diseased itself. It doesn’t matter if it was first inflicted with cancer or if it was the second organ or third to be inflicted with cancer through spreading. The primary action is to remove a cancerous organ, the fact that there is a baby in it at the time is secondary. So again, you couldn’t remove the baby, and then treat the uterus for the cancer separately in an attempt to save the uterus because the primary intervention would be on the baby, which is not allowed by the Church. You
can begin treatment on the cancer while still pregnant because the treatment would be on the uterus and not the baby. If any harm comes to the baby because of the treatment, that’s secondary because it wasn’t the primary action. The primary action was to treat a diseased organ.
The same would apply if the woman is taking category X drugs while pregnant. For example, someone who does not respond well to medications used to treat high blood pressure, such as beta blockers or ace inhibitors, or who has adverse affects from taking them, may get good blood pressure response to benicar or cozaar instead. Both are category X. A woman is not required by the Church to stop taking these blood pressure medications just because she is pregnant. She may want to, she may try to, but the Church doesn’t require it of her. The reason is, the medications in question are treating the high blood pressure, and their intended usage is not meant to affect the baby, even though it probably will.
Whatever is being done to treat the pregnant woman cannot be directly done to any fetus. It has to treat the organ in question that is diseased.
Does anyone know exactly what was going on with the woman at St. Joes? Because the story keeps being added to…first it was pulmonary hypertension, then it was revealed that there was cardiogenic shock as a result of the pulmonary hypertension exacerbated by the physiological demands of the pregnancy…now someone mentioned the placenta. Was there indeed something wrong with the placenta needing it to be removed? Sorry if this has been already answered somewhere on this thread and I missed it…I thought this was a hypothetical example at first?
You cannot abandon your patient. And you must do your job. The same situation would apply if a CNA reports only 30ml of urine output in a catheter bag during a whole shift. That’s why too small an amount and a big red flag. You must act as expected in that situation or you are negligent. Period end of subject.