Abstract
Three case histories of pregnancy and delivery in paraplegic women are presented. The first patient became paraplegic when six months pregnant. Most probably the foetus had come to harm before her paraplegia. She gave birth to a child with cerebral and bony maldevelopment. The second patient was four months pregnant when she became paraplegic. She also gave birth to a child with severe brain damage, in this case probably due to injury of the uterus and/or the foetus, caused by the trauma at the time of the road accident. In both cases where pregnancy occurred some time after spinal cord injury—which is in the second and third patient—there was delivery of healthy children.
In discussing the clinical observations we state (a) conception is not impaired, (b) the development of the foetus does not seem to be interfered with by complications specifically due to paraplegia, (c) no reduced power of uterine contractions were found in complete thoracic lesions. There still remains the question whether or not paraplegic women are more likely to give birth to damaged or deformed babies than non-paraplegic women if a spinal cord injury occurs during pregnancy or if pregnancy follows spinal cord lesion.
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Göller, H., Paeslack, V. Our experiences about pregnancy and delivery of the paraplegic woman. Spinal Cord 8, 161–166 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1038/sc.1970.29
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sc.1970.29
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