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February 3rd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda FRIDAY. Feb. 3 (HealthDay News) — The babies of women who
develop an epidural-related fever while in labor are at greater risk of
having problems right at birth, including poor muscle tone, breathing
difficulties, low Apgar scores and seizures, a new study suggests.
The Apgar score is a test used to measure a child’s skin color, pulse
and overall vigor in the moments after birth.
Prior research has found an association between epidurals — or
anesthesia delivered into the epidural space around the spinal cord — and
fevers in some moms during labor.
This study, which involved more than 3,200 women delivering a full-term
baby at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston in 2000, found a similar
association.
Just over 19 percent of those who had an epidural developed a
temperature of greater than 100.4 degrees F compared with just 2.4 percent
of women who went without the painkiller.
The higher a woman’s temperature, the more likely the baby was to
experience problems.
For example, about 11 percent of babies whose mothers that a normal or
only slightly elevated temperature at birth had low muscle tone lasting
less than 15 minutes at birth, compared with about 25 percent of babies
with moms who had a fever above 101 degrees.
About 4.4 percent of babies with moms whose temperatures were normal
needed resuscitation measures at delivery, ranging from breathing
assistance to chest compressions, compared with more than 12 percent of
babies whose mothers had a fever of over 101 degrees.
Only eight babies in the study experienced seizures, but babies whose
moms had a fever of 101 degrees or greater were more likely to be among
them, according to the study.
Researchers took into account other factors that could affect the
baby’s health at birth, such as gestational diabetes in the mother or a
known infection in the mother or the baby.
For women who didn’t develop a fever, researchers found no differences
in outcomes for babies for women who had an epidural vs. those who
didn’t.
“It’s clear that from our data that about 20 percent of the term
infants born to mothers who received epidurals experienced one or more
adverse outcomes after birth,” said study author Elizabeth Greenwell, a
doctoral candidate at Harvard School of Public Health when she did the
research.
The study is published in the February issue of Pediatrics.
More than 60 percent of the 4 million women who give birth each year in
the United States get epidurals, according to background information in
the study. In some hospitals, the number is much higher than that. In the
group of women who delivered in Boston, for example, 87 percent had
epidurals.
In this group of women receiving epidurals, 8.6 percent developed a
fever of higher than 101 degrees; 10.7 percent had a temperature of 100.5
to 101 degrees; and 25.5 percent had a temperature of 99.6 degrees to
100.4 degrees.
Those who developed fevers tended to be older, and have larger babies
and longer labors.
The reasons for the link between epidural and fever aren’t well
understood, but it’s believed that inflammatory processes are involved,
Greenwell said.
Most epidural-related fevers emerge after the woman has been numb for
six hours or more, Greenwell noted, so one option for women who are
worried about it might want to delay getting the epidural for as long as
they can, she said.
Dr. Eva Pressman, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at University of
Rochester Medical Center, said “epidural fevers” indeed occur.
However, in this study, researchers didn’t do enough to rule out
another cause for the fever, intrauterine infection. Those infections can
come on quickly during labor and can be very serious for the baby,
including causing brain damage, Pressman said. Known as chorioamnionitis,
intrauterine infections are caused by bacteria from the vagina, that, as
the cervix opens, inflames the fetal membranes.
“Chorioamnionitis has been strongly associated with adverse neonatal
outcomes, especially cerebral palsy,” Pressman said.
To confirm that fevers were due to the epidural and not an infection,
researchers would have had to examine the placenta after birth, she
said.
What’s also not reported is if the women received IV antibiotics to
treat an infection, or acetaminophen to treat fever, and if that would
have improved how the child did, Pressman said.
“You can’t tell if the adverse outcome was related to the epidural or
an underlying infection that was inadequately treated,” she said. “But it
does reinforce that fever in labor is marker for some sort of inflammatory
processes, but whether that inflammatory process is related to an epidural
or an underlying infectious process, this study doesn’t tell us.”
More information
Nemours has more on epidurals.
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