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Monday, September 27, 2010 : 1:30 PM

Title: Hello, Trauma Team? HELLP! Our OB Patient's Liver Ruptured!

Venetian
Lori H. Smith, BSN, RNC, CPAN, CCRN , Labor and Delivery, Christiana Care Health System, Pennsville, NJ

Discipline: Professional Issues (PI), Childbearing (CB)

Learning Objectives:
  1. Identify the signs and symptoms of HELLP.
  2. Discuss the surgical intervention and treatment associated with HELLP related liver rupture.
  3. Discuss the impact of the collaborative effort of trauma and OB teams on patient outcome.
Submission Description:
Although hepatic rupture in pregnant women occurs in only 1 in 250,000 cases, (Shrivasatava et al, 2006; Wicke et al., 2004), its results are life threatening for mother and newborn. Only 41% of mothers and 59% of newborns survive a maternal hepatic rupture (Shrivasatava et al. (2006.Our patient beat these grim odds thanks to the dedicated, skillful, and immediate interventions by the OB team and the surgical critical care trauma team that responded to her emergency.The patient presented to our OB triage with excruciating right upper quadrant pain. Lab results confirmed the diagnosis of HELLP syndrome. She was admitted for labor induction and magnesium sulfate seizure prophylaxis. Shortly after her arrival to labor and delivery, she became profoundly hypotensive and increasingly lethargic, with resulting fetal bradycardia. She was immediately taken to the OB operating room for a c-section. The massive bleeding the OB surgeons encountered was at first thought to be a placental abruption; however, it became apparent that her liver was ruptured and hemorrhaging. We called for the trauma surgeons, who arrived and required equipment such as the Argon laser, the cell saver, and trauma surgery sutures and instruments. Our main OR nurse colleagues swiftly responded to our needs and came to us bearing the equipment we needed and the moral support we appreciated. In turn, the OR nurses were fascinated by the pathophysiology of HELLP, and the sequence of events, that had led us all to standing in our OR. Our neonatal practitioner colleagues and NICU nurses resuscitated the baby with excellent results. Blood products arrived as our massive transfusion protocol was initiated. The patient was stabilized, taken to interventional radiology for hepatic artery embolization, and transferred to the surgical critical care unit. She was discharged home, stable, but with only 1/3 of her liver! As we tell " the story of the liver rupture", we reflect on how well we performed as a team in this emergency and how we could improve on our performance. This reflection and discussion is a vital component to team response to emergencies. We learned that if we don't have something we need, we need to have the right someone to get it. We learned that even the seemingly smallest of kinks in the system can be large in an emergency: our pneumatic tube delivery system was "down" at the exact time that we needed our blood products, necessitating a full-out run by our service assistant to the blood bank. We learned that the noise level in the OR, due to the high level of adrenaline coursing through the large number of persons in the room, can be detrimental to clear communication, and that one person has to be in charge of the flow both personnel and noise in the OR. And we remembered to thank each other for our successful effort to save the life of a young woman in "HELLP" who needed our "help".