Advanced Search
Current and Breaking News for Professionals, Consumers and Media



Click here to learn how to advertise on this site and for ad rates.

Women's Health Author: Staff Editor Last Updated: Nov 29, 2012 - 7:11:02 AM



Consumer Safety Campaign to Raise Awareness of Dangerous Birth Complication

By Staff Editor
Jun 20, 2012 - 11:07:46 AM



Email Newsletter icon, E-mail Newsletter icon, Email List icon, E-mail List icon Sign up for our Ezine
For Email Marketing you can trust


Email this article
 Printer friendly page
PeriGen’s “Start the Conversation” Campaign Encourages Pregnant Women to Discuss Shoulder Dystocia Risk with Their Physicians

(HealthNewsDigest.com) - Princeton, NJ – PeriGen, Inc., the leading innovator of fetal surveillance systems, is launching a patient safety campaign designed to inform pregnant women about shoulder dystocia, a serious childbirth complication. The “Start the Conversation” campaign provides pregnant women with a self-assessment tool that helps determine if they have one or more key risk factors for shoulder dystocia and, if so, encourages them to discuss their findings with their physician.

The campaign also highlights the implications of high weight gain during pregnancy, one of the known shoulder dystocia risk factors.

Shoulder dystocia occurs when a baby’s shoulder gets stuck under the mother’s pubic bone during delivery, preventing the baby from emerging easily from the birth canal. The complication occurs in approximately one in every 100 vaginal births. The delivery techniques necessary to resolve shoulder dystocia, as well as the natural forces of labor and delivery, can lead to injury to the brachial plexus, a group of nerves in the neck and shoulder. This condition occurs in approximately one in 1,000 vaginal births. Brachial plexus injury may lead to lifelong weakness or paralysis in the baby’s arm.

“Shoulder Dystocia can be catastrophic, so it is important for pregnant women to learn about this condition and their personal risk factors,” said Matt Sappern, PeriGen’s CEO. “It is also important for OB/GYN physicians to know there is a widely-vetted tool available to assist them in identifying patients who may be at increased risk for shoulder dystocia with brachial plexus injury so that they can take action and avoid this emergency situation” .

The PeriCALM® Shoulder Screen™ is the only patented, web-based tool available today. The Shoulder Screen is administered in program four simple steps: 1) a checklist of key risk factors; 2) data entry of several personal clinical items, including estimated fetal weight; 3) risk estimation; and 4) documentation of discussion with the mother and her preference for delivery method.
Through “Start the Conversation,” PeriGen encourages pregnant women to take the first step in the Shoulder Screen program by completing the checklist during their third trimester and speaking with their physician. To date, more than 65,000 patients have already taken the first step, and been screened by their physicians.

“By considering multiple factors, we are now able to help clinicians find the small group of women who are high risk for a severe form of shoulder dystocia with injury to the brachial plexus,” said Emily Hamilton, MD, PeriGen’s SVP of Clinical Research and the PeriCALM Shoulder Screen inventor. “The challenge was to do this without causing an excessive increase in cesarean births.”

A study published this month in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology tracked outcomes over a period spanning 4 years after the introduction of this technology. Overall shoulder dystocia rates fell by more than 50 percent with no increase in the primary Cesarean rate among the 8,767 patients whose physicians used the PeriCALM Shoulder Screen tool.

PeriCALM Shoulder Screen is provided through physician insurers such as Conventus and MD Advantage to their covered physicians. It is also sold to hospitals for use in Ob triage and hospital clinic settings.

About PeriGen, Inc.

PeriGen is an innovative provider of fetal surveillance systems employing patented, pattern-recognition and obstetrics technologies that empower perinatal clinicians to make confident, real-time decisions about the mothers and babies in their care. PeriGen’s customer-centric team of clinicians and technologists builds the most advanced systems available to augment obstetric decision-making and improve communications among the clinical team at the point of care, while supporting data flow between healthcare IT systems.

PeriGen’s unique fetal surveillance products provide dynamic visual cues that direct clinicians to the most essential patient information displayed on the screen. Unlike legacy fetal monitoring devices and software from non-specialist companies, PeriGen Visual Cueing™ provides an instant view of the mother’s and baby’s current status and trends over time to avoid errors, increasing patient safety and reducing risk for clinicians and hospitals. For more information, please visit us at www.PeriGen.com.

# # #

For advertising and promotion on HealthNewsDigest.com please contact Mike McCurdy: tvmike13@HealthNewsDigest.com or 877-634-9180
HealthNewsDigest.com is syndicated worldwide, to thousands of journalists and health-related websites. www.HealthNewsDigest.com

Top of Page

HealthNewsDigest.com

Women's Health
Latest Headlines


+ Expert Talks Breasts and Angelina Jolie
+ Genetic Counseling Helps Women and Families Face Inherited Gynecological Cancers
+ Despite New Recommendations, Women in 40s Continue to Get Routine Mammograms at Same Rate
+ Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Ruptures More Common in Women Than Men
+ Pregnancy: A Time for Special Caution
+ How Much Do You Know About Women's Health and Health Coverage? Take the Quiz to Find Out
+ Many Women Find It Difficult to Pay for an Abortion Procedure, are Unable to Use Insurance
+ Elective Cesarean Delivery Requested by Pregnant Women Requires Careful Consideration of Potential Benefits and Risks
+ Preeclampsia Foundation Introduces Education Tool to Inform Expectant Mothers about Life-Threatening Disorder of Pregnancy
+ FDA Warns Pregnant Women to Not Use Certain Migraine Prevention Medicines



Contact Us | Job Listings | Help | Site Map | About Us
Advertising Information | HND Press Release | Submit Information | Disclaimer

Site hosted by Sanchez Productions