New mother dies after inexperienced medic pulls out her placenta moments after giving birth to baby girl
A young woman in Russia reportedly suffered from "excruciating pain" and died in a coma shortly after she gave birth when an inexperienced obstetrician allegedly ripped out the woman's placenta in Russia.
According to reports, 22-year-old Alisa Tepikina smiled when she saw her newborn daughter, but was soon left screaming in agony as the recently-qualified medic apparently pulled out the umbilical cord roughly.
The placenta reportedly didn't separate from the mother's inverted uterus in the normal way, and Tepikina fell into a coma, suffered from a cardiac arrest, and then died.
A criminal investigation has been launched into possible medical negligence in the case that took place in Nizhneserginskaya, in Russia's Sverdlovsk region, the Daily Mail reported.
Tepikina's 47-year-old father Dmitry Malyukov said: "We have been told that the 'birth' of the placenta did not occur. The midwife called in a doctor. The obstetrician, aged 27 and recently qualified, began to pull the umbilical cord roughly. My daughter was suffering, she was screaming in pain. But the doctor paid no attention."
The furious father said that his family has friends working on the medical staff in the hospital, and who saw what happened and gave evidence to the police for the same.
He said: "She tugged the umbilical cord with real force — the uterus was inverted. Alisa screamed so loud that she could be heard throughout the hospital. This is like something from the Middle Ages. This caused a pain shock, severe bleeding, and she fell into a coma."
Malyukov was then told that his daughter had suffered a cardiac arrest and never regained consciousness. A helicopter had been put on standby to immediately rush the mother to a major surgical hospital but she was deemed too weak to fly.
The official cause of Tepikina's death was registered as severe shock caused by pain, her 42-year-old mother Svetlana Cheshko said.
Soon after the birth, the young mother's 22-year-old husband Nikolay Tepikin accompanied the newborn to another hospital because the baby had a minor neck injury. When he returned to the hospital a few hours later, he was told that his wife was seriously ill and was allowed to sit by her side.
But it emerged that his wife was already dead by then. The young father said: "Her eyes were covered in blindfolds, her jaw was tied up. There were tubes everywhere for a lung ventilator but no machine nearby. I reached out to hold her hand - and it was cold."
The obstetrician who performed the birth was suspended and the Russian Investigative Committee confirmed that a criminal case has been launched.
The head physician at Nizhneserginskaya hospital, Elena Barannikova, claimed that her doctors were not the ones at fault and that the "uterus spontaneously inverted". She said: "It is rare, but it happens."