A variety of surgical abortion procedures available to choose from that will be based on a woman’s perception. As delicate as the issue of abortion, each individual who decide to go through the process should have the ability to choose and know which procedure is more convenient to them. It is also proper to let the patient know their options and the benefit of each. Knowledge of the right method to facilitate, based on the age of the fetus is also significant.
The common surgical abortion procedure is suction aspiration. It is usually utilize during the early 12 weeks of pregnancy. General anesthesia is given to dilate the cervix. Then, a suction curette is inserted into the womb to suck out the fetus and placenta, which are torn into pieces, all the way through the connected tube. Another procedure is the dilatation and curettage where the pieces of the fetus is scraped off the uterus. The physician should be cautious enough to make sure to eliminate all the placenta and fetus fragments which can cause profuse bleeding that may lead to death.
For 16 to 18 weeks age of gestation, salt poisoning and dilatation and evacuation are commonly used. In dilatation and evacuation, instead of scraping off the fetus just like with D&C, grasping the fetus out using a forcep is executed. While in salt poisoning the use of a saline solution which is injected to the mother’s abdomen that results to a death of the baby. The mother will then undergo delivery of a dead baby.
No matter, which procedure the mother chooses, it is still best that all options and information should be disseminated thoroughly. At that point, anxiousness and fear would be limited. Respective physician should provide a sense of freedom in terms of decision making. Just to reiterate, abortion itself is a delicate issue,so it requires a tandem between the practitioner and the patient to make the process successful both on physical and emotional aspect.