The 18-Minute Myth: Why “Safe” Decision-to-Delivery Times Aren’t Safe Enough-It's Not All Relative
The literature suggests 18 minutes is the delivery threshold for avoiding severe acidemia. The literature is wrong, every minute you shave off your response time is a minute of fetal brain you save.
Albert Einstein once reportedly explained relativity by noting that an hour with a pretty girl feels like a minute, while a minute on a hot stove feels like an hour. For a fetus during tachysystole, every minute the uterus contracts without adequate recovery time is the hot stove.
A respected colleague recently pushed back on my assertion that the OR sho…
