Labor and Delivery
Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]
Overview
Labor and Delivery, a labor ward or a labour ward is a department of a hospital devoted to childbirth. In many hospitals, "Labor and Delivery" is one department and "Maternity", where a woman recovers following birth, is another. In the United States, it is common practice to move a woman from Labor and Delivery to Maternity in the hour following birth.
Benefits and drawbacks
Delivery in the birthing department of a hospital is common practice in Western culture. Benefits include facilities and equipment for an emergency caesarean section and access to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).
Risks include drug complications (the leading adverse effect of hospitalization[1]) and the possibility of a nosocomial infection (infection contracted in a hospital, the second most frequent adverse effect of hospitalization[2][1]), responsible for 88,000 deaths in the United States in 1995.[3][4]
History
The first maternity ward in the United States is established at Bellevue Hospital Center in 1799.
Alternatives
Alternatives to hospital delivery include birthing centers and home birth.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The nature of adverse events in hospitalized patients. Results of the Harvard Medical Practice Study II
- ↑ Binary Cumulative Sums and Moving Averages in Nosocomial Infection Cluster Detection, Centers for Disease Control
- ↑ Causes of Death of the United States of America - Death by Medicine Part II
- ↑ The Impact of the Environment on Infections in Healthcare Facilities, The Center for Health Design