Placenta percreta: report of a case.

Placenta accreta, increta, or percreta are rare but potentially lethal obstetric emergencies. Removal of abnormal growth of the placenta into the uterine wall is difficult or impossible and results in massive blood loss. Hysterectomy may be necessary to save the mother's life. The common predisposing factors in development of placenta percreta are repeat cesarean and placenta previa. The diagnosis of placenta percreta may remain undiagnosed until delivery. The case presented describes a scenario involving placenta percreta with bladder involvement in which the diagnosis was known in advance. The article describes the preoperative preparation, intraoperative events, and postoperative status of this particular case.

Accuracy of blood loss determination by health care professionals.

Patients undergoing surgery will likely experience some degree of blood loss. There is much literature examining effects of blood loss, but little was found that examined accuracy of estimation of blood loss. The research question for this study was: How accurate are surgical health care professionals in their estimations of blood loss? This study was a pre-experimental between-subject design that used a convenience sample of 85 volunteers who worked in the surgical and postsurgical units of a rural southern 450-bed hospital. The participants viewed 1 of 3 randomly chosen samples of laparotomy pads with variable amounts of blood and saline. Only the researchers knew the exact amount contained on the pads. The variables that were examined and were compared included the professional group, years of experience in surgery or the postanesthesia care unit (PACU), and their estimation of blood loss. Their estimation of blood loss was compared with the actual amount of blood to determine whether one group was more accurate than another statistically and whether increasing years of experience improved accuracy. The statistical tests used were simple and multiple regressions.