By LAURAN NEERGAARD
AP Medical Writer
WASHINGTON – Eleven days after her son Benjamin’s birth by C-section, Linda Coale awoke in the middle of the night in pain, one leg badly swollen. Just as her doctor returned her phone call asking what to do, she dropped dead from a blood clot.
Pregnancy-related deaths like Coale’s appear to have risen nationwide over the past decade, nearly tripling in the state with the most careful count – California. And while they’re very rare – about 550 a year out of 4 million births nationally – they’re nowhere near as rare as they should be. The maternal mortality rate is four times higher than a goal the federal government set for this year.
“It’s unacceptable,” says Dr. Mark Chassin of The Joint Commission, the agency that accredits U.S. hospitals and which recently issued an alert to hospitals to take steps to protect mothers-to-be. “Maybe as many as half of these are preventable.”