Celebrity Births

Many surgeons are turned into gossips by long waits in hospital theatres where trashy magazines are the only thing to read.

This has improved with smartphones but old habits can die hard.

OB's find it fun to read about celebrity births and read between the lines to work out what really happened.

These celebrities make a lot of money from these articles and so sometimes things are hammed up to various degrees.

The first one I remember looking at was Gwyneth P many years ago where she was having her first baby in an exclusive birth centre in London.  Her baby was over 9lb and after a very long labour she released stories of some medical intervention at the end.  Two years later she had an elective ceasarean section and so its not hard to imagine she had a difficult birth and a bad tear.  A London OB - due to the system over there - would have delivered less than 5% of the babies I have so forceps and a big episiotomy would have been the minimum.

The most recent one we hear about now is Serena W which is dramatic also.  Apparently an Emergency Ceasarean followed by a Pulmonary embolus and wound breakdown.  Two almost unheard of complications for one of the richest women in the world?!?  Bad luck or hamming it up?

Well CNN says SW is prone to clots and in fact usually takes a blood thinner daily to avoid them - aspirin 100mg I suspect - and she came off them after the delivery "to allow the surgical wound to heal".

Now thats bizarre - as almost any woman who has had a ceasarean section with me knows that is the time we START the blood thinners.  So I'm bemused why she was allowed to do this, perhaps her OB was overawed - this should never happen - the surgeon must always be the boss and I teach my juniors this.

So the blood thinners were stopped and the clot in the lung occurred and she coughed and popped her stitches.  Again those must have been mega coughs but she is a powerful woman.

So the wound was resutured in theatre , then there was blood in her abdomen "caused by the anticoagulants she restarted"  - errr... so not a leaking blood vessel then...

Its hard to keep up but then she went back for a 4th (did I miss one or add one?) time to have a thrombus filter  inserted in her IVC to prevent further clot.  

Whew! Her OB must have been very stressed out - although it sounds like she didn't have one from the article.  

Therefore its no surprise she isn't at the Aussie open.  She's be on serious anticoagulation for a minimum of 6 months and I can't see her being a contender this year.  

Is the article true? We'll see.