In our increasingly technological, mobile, and industrial society, trauma is an almost inescapable by-product. This book addresses itself to trauma as it affects the pregnant woman. More than 50 million Americans are injured, and 130,000 are killed annually in various types of accidents; it is reported that 7% of pregnant women sustain some form of injury. In a Minnesota Mortality Study, 26% of nonobstetric maternal deaths were caused by trauma. This is duplicated in an unofficial review of the findings of the Chicago Maternal Mortality Committee for 1978.
Trauma in Pregnancy is well written, although there is overlapping of information and advice that is almost inherent in a multiauthor, multidiscipline book, but the repeated recommendation to turn the patient to one side to relieve pressure on the vena cava is too much.
An early chapter on anatomic and physiological alterations of pregnancy that modify the response to trauma is of