Bangalore doctors deploy new method to arrest bleeding during pregnancy

BENGALURU: Doctors at Bangalore have used a new method, sclerotherapy to arrest have used a novel method to arrest cervical bleeding during pregnancy. Sclerotherapy widely used to treat bleeding in varicose veins was used by doctors at Rangadore Memorial Hospital in Basavanagudi for stopping bleeding in a 25-year-old woman who was suffering from cervical varix.

Sclerotherapy effectively treats varicose and spider veins and is considered the treatment of choice for small varicose veins. It involves injecting a solution directly into the vein which causes the vein to scar, forcing blood to reroute through healthier veins. The collapsed vein is reabsorbed into local tissue and eventually fades.

The lady patient reported to the hospital with complaints of excessive bleeding in the second trimester of pregnancy. She was brought to the hospital in November 2017 when she was four months pregnant. With excessive bleeding, she was battling death even as the foetus was growing within. The doctor found that the bleeding was not from the placenta which happens usually, but from the mouth of the uterus, a rare condition called cervical varix.

Sclerotherapy, wherein an injection costs just Rs 120 and is widely used to treat bleeding in varicose veins, was used

A team of doctors led by Dr Latha Venkataram, Head of Obstetrics and gynaecological department at the hospital, treated the patient using Sclerotherapy. The injection administered to the woman contained 0.5ml of a medically used chemical component called sodium tetradecyl sulphate foam that was injected to the mouth of the uterus. The patient recovered and her uterus was saved. She came to the hospital two months later, in with spontaneous labour in her 28th week of pregnancy and delivered a stillborn male baby weighing just 750g. After one year, she returned in the final stage of pregnancy and delivered a girl weighing 1.9kg in December 2018.

“The challenge was to save her, her uterus and the foetus. The only other option was to perform embolisation (stopping the bleeding through radiation) that would have cost over Rs 1 lakh. The patient was neither stable enough to undergo the same nor could her family afford it. We discussed and counselled the family and went ahead with sclerotherapy and saved her,” told Dr Varna V Rao, gynaecologist and obstetrician to TOI.

A scientific paper about the case was presented at the recent All India Congress of Obstetrics and Gynaecology here.