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The classification of placenta praevia – time for a change?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 October 2008

Lawrence W Oppenheimer
Affiliation:
Ottawa General Hospital, University of Ottawa, Canada
Dan Farine*
Affiliation:
Mount Sinai Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada
JW Knox Ritchie
Affiliation:
Mount Sinai Hospital, University of Toronto, Canada
*
Dan Farine, Director of Perinatology, Department of Ob-Gyn, Mount Sinai Hospital, Room 775, 600 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M5G 1X5, Canada

Extract

The techniques employed in the diagnosis of placenta praevia have altered radically since Guillemeau first described the condition in 1685, stating that ‘The surgeon must consider if it is the child or if it is the after-birth who presents first’. However, his description went unnoted, for Giffart in narrating a case of haemorrhage wrote in 1730: ‘I cannot receive as absolutely true the opinion of those authors, who say that the placenta is always attached to the fundus uteri, for in this case, as in many others, I have every reason to believe that it adhered on the internal orifice, or very near to it; and that, in dilating, the latter occasioned the separation of the after-birth, and as a consequence the haemorrhage.’

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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