OPERATIONS OF NECESSITY DURING PREGNANCY

Abstract

We shall discuss here conditions amenable to surgical intervention that may complicate pregnancy, but that are not the results of it. However, certain physiologic and anatomic changes incident to pregnancy may influence certain associated lesions and add to the gravity of the surgical risk. Examples of this are: (1) the rapidity with which certain types of tumors of the breast and uterus grow as a result of the increased blood supply incident to pregnancy; (2) changes in the relative position of the pelvic organs and some of the abdominal viscera caused by the enlarging uterus, with disturbance of quiescent lesions, and (3) the probability that the retardation in the filling and emptying of the gallbladder during pregnancy and the increased cholesterol content of the blood are factors in the formation of gallstones during pregnancy and even exacerbation of quiescent cholecystitis. In the examination of women in the child-bearing age for