Abstract
Altogether 300 married Finnish women working as anaesthesia, scrub, casualty and intensive care unit nurses were interviewed about the fate of their pregnancies since 1965. The scrub nurses had the highest frequency of miscarriages; 21.5% of the pregnancies ended in spontaneous abortion. Intensive care unit nurses had a miscarriage rate of 16.7%, anaesthesia nurses 15.0% and casualty department nurses 8.3% of the pregnancies, respectively. The difference between the rate of the combined number of miscarriages of operating room nurses (anaesthesia and scrub) and that of the others was statistically significant. Scrub nurses seemed to have the earliest miscarriages (mean 9.3 weeks), and intensive care unit nurses also had earlier mean time of miscarriages (10.4 weeks) than anaesthesia nurses (11.1 weeks). Gross abnormalities were not observed in the children, but two cases of foetal death in the third trimester of pregnancy (anaesthesia and intensive care unit nurses) and two cases of mental retardation (scrub and intensive care unit nurses) were registered. The results do not indicate foetal lethality of anaesthetic gases in operating room but rather an increased rate of spontaneous miscarriages due to stress.
Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
