Umm, what about better hygiene in hospitals? My first child was born by vaginal extraction (suction, not forceps) in Germany. No antibiotic shots or pills and no infection.
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I got a GBS infection (led to sepsis) two days postpartum after a largely uneventful vaginal delivery of my third child. I tested negative for GBS at 36 weeks.
He was my first child born in the US. I had two other children who were born in Japan and Taiwan. Both places gave me some kind of antibiotic immediately postpartum. I never got an infection.
I realize correlation isn’t causation, but I wonder....
A year later, I’m still dealing with the emotional and physical effects of that infection. It infuriates me to think this all could have been avoided with a few pills or a shot.
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Hospitals = filthy. Hospital errors = 3rd leading cause of death in America.
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It is great to read about an effective intervention that is simple and cost-effective. It would be even greater to have a little more depth and context for the readers. I would have liked to have been able to also learn about the severity of the infections prevented - hospitalizations or deaths averted? The relative risk was given, what was the actual risk of infection in the placebo group? What are the next steps before this intervention could be adopted? How might this intervention affect the unacceptable disparity in maternal mortality according to race/ethnicity? Lastly, it would be helpful to read a sentence or two that speculated whether this might also be useful in preventing postpartum infections in non-operative vaginal births and in c-section births. What are the rates of infection in women with these birth experiences to start with?
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It is good to read about a study where antibiotics actually play an important role in preventing disease, backed up by solid study data. The unnecessary use of antibiotics have been rightfully coming under much more scrutiny as resistant organisms like MRSA and E. coli become greater problems.
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