In this digital era, hospitals across America institute layers of precautionary measures to ensure that patient identities remain inviolate and intact. Each time a patient enters a hospital or the doctor's office, he is asked to sign a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability form mandating that his identity on all personal records be protected. Further, each patient is given a hospital identification bracelet that is checked every time a treatment or medication is administered, to ensure that he is the intended recipient. The ‘procedural pause’ is another identification procedure that is currently mandated to identify the correct patient with the correct procedure. In addition, new parents on the maternity service are asked to wear identification bracelets that link them to their newborn and prevent the unlawful removal or switching of infants.
Yet, in spite of all these precautions, there exists in virtually every hospital delivery room a form of identity theft that goes undetected. We refer to the continued error in labeling and identifying the placenta with the mother's hospital number, forever linking it with her and her medical record rather than with the infant. The placenta develops from the trophoblastic layer of the blastocyst, which adheres and eventually implants in the endometrium. Thus, the new conceptus—not the mother—is the origin of the placenta and the fetal membranes. The placenta then, by virtue of its biological history, belongs to the newborn. Even more importantly, the placenta is a significant source of clinical information for the fetus and newborn. A serious evaluation of the placenta can disclose infections, cord abnormalities and the etiology of intrauterine growth failure, Twin–Twin Transfusion Syndrome, and other conditions impacting the newborn.1
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