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Sunday, January 05, 2014
Term
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Over my month on obstetric anesthesia, I've wondered a lot about the definition of term. When I was in medical school, a term pregnancy was 37 to 42 weeks, but just several months ago, the American College of Gynecology, subdivided this even to early term (37 weeks to 38 weeks and 6 days), full term, and late term (41-41+6). All this hullabaloo is fascinating to me. Are we trying to medicalize a normal process? Should we be trying to force all women to deliver in this time frame? Although we know that there are risks to preterm and post-term deliveries, it also feels like engineering a natural life event. Is this akin to giving growth hormone to people who are too short? Is it like cosmetic surgery? Should we inducing labor in all post-term patients and preventing labor in all preterm patients? When do we cross the line in controlling processes developed over thousands of years of evolution?
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In ancient Greece, the asclepion was a healing temple dedicated to Asclepius, the God of Medicine. Asclepius learned the art of surgery from the centaur Chiron and had the ability to raise the dead. The Rod of Asclepius is a roughhewn branch entwined with a single serpent.
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Hi! I am Craig Chen, a third year resident physician in anesthesiology at Stanford Hospitals and Clinics. I went to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco. Prior to medical school, I studied philosophy and biology at Stanford University, along with a minor in creative writing.
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