Swine Flu

So I decided to have the topic swine flu be one of the first posts on here since it seems to be what all the hype is about right now. We had a meeting about this with all the other OB docs in town last week and have come to a consensus about how to manage this in pregnancy-as some of you have seen coming into the office. The chief of OB at McKay-Dee (Dr. Kammeyer) showed a study that was from the "Lancet" journal that had statistics for the mortality rate of swine flu in pregnancy being 50% (of course this was a small study and not from Utah). However, we have had pregnancy cases here in Ogden with extremely ill patients, one of which was even in the ICU on a ventilator. Because of this, we are taking the swine flu very seriously and doing all we can to prevent our pregnant population from acquiring this. You will see our signs in the office about no children during your visits or even during your birth during this winter season. This is only for 4 months or so and is to protect you and your newborn baby, not to annoy you! The best way of course to protect yourself (besides getting the vaccine) is to wash your hands and avoid sick people, or stay home if you are ill. I know some of you are worried about the swine flu vaccine being a new vaccine, but I have to say that the injection is a dead virus vaccine, not a live one, so you will not become ill from it. Flu vaccines are new every year. Each year they formulate a vaccine off of what they believe the flu virus will be like for that year. These are safe vaccines and swine flu is no different. It's just a different strain of a virus. Please consider getting the vaccine when it becomes available. If you are experiencing sore throat, fever, cough, or body aches, please call our office at the onset of symptoms and we will call you in a prescription for Tamiflu (an antiviral medication). If you have been exposed to swine flu we can also call you in the same prescription but the dosing will be different. If you are having difficulty breathing, please go to the ER. I take the health of you and your baby very seriously and hope you understand the reasons for limiting visitors, etc. this flu season. I will hopefully have vaccines by mid to late October. In the meantime, get your regular seasonal flu vaccine, wash your hands, get plenty of rest, try not to panic, and enjoy your pregnancy!