A noninvasive evaluation analysis of amniotic fluid embolism and disseminated intravascular coagulopathy.

OBJECTIVE: Amniotic fluid embolism (AFE) is a complication of pregnancy with a high mortality rate. The diagnosis of AFE is currently based on clinical findings, acute respiratory distress, cardiovascular collapse during labor and delivery, and immediate massive postpartum hemorrhaging. The serum biological markers are unreliable, and their detection requires a long time intervals for result. An early diagnosis is very important and prompts the clinical management of the condition.

STUDY DESIGN AND RESULTS: We present here a noninvasive method (time frequency, entropy) to analyze heart rate variability (HRV). 3D-Spectrogram and entropy were derived from the RR interval of two pregnant subjects with AFE and disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) survived after delivering normal babies admitted to the Taiwan Seventh-day Adventists Hospital, and the entropy values were compared with those of 105 healthy pregnant subjects in the same hospital.

CONCLUSIONS: We show that these methods can be successfully applied to the diagnosis of AFE and predict the prognosis of DIC. We also show that CT scans can be applied to the diagnosis of pulmonary embolism, eliminating the need to pathology.