Infection after an abortion. How to treat?
How to treat?
Getting an infection after an abortion is a rare incident. Some of the symptoms that indicates this type of infection are:
- Experiencing weakness, nausea, urge to vomit or diarrhea, several days after taking the abortion pill;
- Fever that lasts longer than 24 hours or is above 38 º C/100.4ºF;
- Pain in the abdomen. If your belly feels sore or sensitive (several days after having the abortion);
- Smelly vaginal discharge (several days after having the abortion).
In case of fever that begins soon after taking Misoprostol (Cytotec – 200mcg), lasts less than 24 hours and is lower than 38°C/100.4ºF, this means you are facing a common side effect. If the fever lasts more than 24 hours or exceeds 38ºC /100.4ºF, you should see a doctor.
Infections after medicinal abortions are very rare. If you suspect you might have gotten an infection, then you should see a doctor immediately. The infection must be treated with antibiotics.
The medical abortion is a safer alternative in places where surgical methods are dangerous to women’s health or in locations where the availability of safe abortions is restricted.
Just to compare, the risk of infection is higher when a woman has a child (normal chilbirth) than when she does a medical abortion.
INCREASE YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Physicians discussed a case in which a woman died from complications associated with the Clostridium Sordellii infection and determined that, while the contamination was related to a medical abortion, the case “does not change the previously proven safety of the medical abortions induced with Misoprostol (Cytotec – 200mcg).” (06)
Clostridium Sordellii can also cause fatal infections in women who have just given birth. (22)
Therefore, this is not an infection that only affects women having medical abortions. Clostridium Sordellii specifically drawn attention for its unusual and most characteristic signs and symptoms associated with these infections – an absence of fever, but with the presence of refractory hypotension, hemoconcentration, effusions in multiple aqueous cavities, and dramatic leukocytosis.
There is a known case of a woman who passed away in Canada, in 2001, from the same bacterial infection and under the same circumstances. Disturbing aspects of cases described by Fischer in this newspaper article (pages 2352-2360) include these aspects:
All women were young and healthy; they apparently have had successful procedures (at the autopsy there weren’t found evidences of retained products of conception); they had no fever, and all died remarkably quick after the exposure to the infection.
Regardless of how tragic the deaths of these young and heathy women were, this is still a small number of cases that have no clear pathophysiological connection with the method of abortion. Patients should be warned about this risk before agreeing to carry out the procedure. They should also monitor the symptoms after the practice (29). “Most studies about medical abortions have not reported infections after abortions, however, they mention a few isolated cases” (18).
A group of medical researchers reviewed numerous studies and concluded that:
“An infection after the abortion is not a frequent event, happening in less than 1% of about 46 400 cases, which is substantially lower than the frequency of infection after surgical abortions.”
This is what makes the medical abortion safer than a surgical abortion.
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