Chairman's Biography

Gian Carlo Di Renzo is Professor of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Perinatal Medicine. He is Director of the Perinatal and Reproductive Centre, Chairman of the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, and Dean of the Faculty of Obstetrics and Midwifery at the University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy. Since graduation cum laude at the Medical School of the University of Padova, Professor Di Renzo has been a research fellow at the Universities of Verona, Messina and Modena and has also been a research fellow at CHUV in Lausanne, Switzerland, UCH in London, England, the University of Texas, Dallas, USA and the Catholic University in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. His many research interests include prostaglandins and parturition, preterm labour, fetal lung maturity, childbirth organisation and gynaecologic endocrinology. Professor Di Renzo is on the Editorial Board of several international journals and is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine. Professor Di Renzo was awarded the Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Athens, Greece and Cluj-Napoca, Romania and he has been the recipient of the Maternité prize from the European Association of Perinatal Medicine. He is a member of numerous professional societies and has organised several international congresses and courses. Professor Di Renzo has published more than 1000 papers (over 200 published in peer-reviewed international journals and 65 books).

Presentation

View the symposium introduction by Professor Di Renzo

Transcript

Slide1
Today, we are talking about Post Partum Hemorrhage. I know at this meeting there have been already a couple of sessions dealing with this topic, and it is a very hard topic in our challenges for obstetricians.

Slide2
I would like to start with this picture. I believe that everybody recognizes it, even though you may not have had the chance to visit this place. It is the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. Do you know that this is related to PPH, post partum hemorrhage? Why?

Slide3
Because the emperor, Shah Jahan - Mughal, in 1631 lost his wife Mumtaz during the birth of their 14th child from post partum hemorrhage. So, quoting my friend Dan Farine, we can say that for many of us the Taj Mahal is a monument to love, but in this case it is a monument to PPH death unfortunately.

Slide4
We know that maternal mortality is still high worldwide, particularly in poor resources countries. More than half a million women die every year, 25 percent by severe bleeding. So one fourth of any death around the world related to delivery is related to hemorrhage.

Slide5
We even know that the percentage of these deaths is of course a little bit higher in poor resources countries but is not low in developed countries as well. We have to fight and to find strategies in any part of the world to reduce this pattern to our society and to our families.

Slide6
You see that this post partum monitor is steadily rising also in countries where you expect that the best of the practice and the care is trying to prevent it. That is not the case. Still we have to find our way to reduce this problem.

Slide7
We have 90 minutes of discussion of a presentation discussion today, in the meantime during this 90 minutes 90 will die around the world, 30 from post partum hemorrhage. Twenty-five women will nearly die of post partum hemorrhage but will be saved by our intervention. That is too low. Two thousand seven hundred women will suffer birth injuries because we will hear from the ladies, the prospective mothers, sometimes they bring a lot of birth injuries afterwards.

There is some good news. In the meantime as we are speaking today for an hour and a half, 36,000 new pregnancies are starting at least, but unfortunately 20,000 of them are unwanted. You know what is going around the world in a big perspective.

Slide8
Do we have the duty and the possibility to do something - of course! We must do.

Slide9
We must be informative about this, speak and evaluate. Assess the problem. Train the people and educate not only the caregivers, but also women and the social network to prevent the menace that we have today. Intervene, supportive, finally to do our audit, at the local level, regional level and national level to understand how good we are in application of some remedies or prevention in order to avoid this problem.

Slide10
We must try with post partum hemorrhage to predict and prevent what is mostly unpredictable. But we need not despair and we should not be complacent with such a problem.

With this introduction I would like to acknowledge the three speakers who will start today giving you some updated information. The first will be Tim Draycott, and I will call him on stage to start with his presentation.

Thank you for coming. Thank you for the support of course of the company which is helping us in organizing these kinds of meetings. Please Tim, introduce the topic.

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