At the beginning of 2019, leaders with Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women cut the ribbon on the organization’s first stand-alone OB-GYN intensive care unit. Located in the Pavilion for Women’s labor and delivery unit, the four-bed ICU offers a specialized, private space for high-risk expectant and postpartum mothers with conditions such as:
“This beautiful space gives our highly trained clinicians the perfect place to carry out specialized services we’ve offered to our high-risk patients since opening in 2012,” said Lynda Tyer-Viola, vice president of nursing for the Pavilion for Women. “Having comprehensive family-centered perinatal services in such a setting will help us continue to make a dramatic difference in the lives of expectant mothers with critical complications of pregnancy.”
The Pavilion for Women is home to one of the nation’s few ICUs dedicated solely to obstetric critical care, and the only four-bed maternal ICU in the nation staffed 24/7 by a pulmonary critical care and maternal fetal care team embedded in a hospital’s labor and delivery unit.
The unit’s new space offers critically ill obstetric patients the latest life-saving equipment and fetal monitoring systems and a dedicated ICU team including 24/7 critical care physicians, maternal-fetal medicine specialists, and an ICU-trained and ACLS (advanced cardiovascular life support)-certified nursing staff.
The ICU team collaborates closely with Baylor College of Medicine subspecialties including cardiology, hematology and nephrology, among others. The unit and team is also one of the most experienced in the nation in the care of post fetal surgery mothers.
Dr. Manisha Gandhi, chief of maternal-fetal medicine at Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women, said there is a great need for dedicated critical care services for women.
“Hypertensive disease, hemorrhage, and thromboembolic disease are known to be critical illnesses that put women at risk for significant morbidity and mortality,” Gandhi said. “Our intensive care unit within our labor and delivery unit provides a dedicated space with specialty expertise to care for these patients and improve outcomes.”
Dr. David Muigai, medical director of the maternal ICU, said while life threatening illness or medical conditions add to the complexity of any pregnancy, we are fortunate to have a multidisciplinary clinical team and resources that address the needs of both mother and fetus during this very crucial period.
“We feel a deep sense of privilege and pride to be able to further contribute to the overall Texas Children’s mission by offering the highest quality and most comprehensive medical services available to expectant mothers and their babies,” Muigai said.
For more information about Texas Children’s Pavilion for Women, click here.