GuidelinesOther guideline
Early Pregnancy Complications
This booklet is intended as a practical guide to patient care for registrars, medical officers, interns and medical students attached to the gynaecology units at the University of the Witwatersrand Academic Hospitals. Anyone can use it.
Septic abortion & ectopic pregnancy are life-threatening causes of lower abdominal pain. Threatened, inevitable, & routine incomplete miscarriages require management but rarely lead to a crisis.
Diagnosis
- Ask a menstrual history, & for the use of contraception
- Ask the patient if she thinks she could be or have been pregnant
- Consider interference with a pregnancy (often not confessed)
- PID & a normal first-trimester pregnancy do not co-exist
- Examination & ultrasound can distinguish normal, aborted & ectopic pregnancies & will identify sepsis
Management
- Is discussed separately (in section on Early Pregnancy Problems)