Fatal pulmonary embolism by amniotic fluid.

Sudden death, during or just after labour, has only too often been attributed to " obstetric shock." Out of this aetiological obscurity, in 1941 and 1942, Steiner and Lushbaugh extracted one recognizable cause of death, the finding in the maternal blood vessels of amniotic material. Recognition of other cases has followed rapidly (see review by Sluder and Lock, 1952), but thus far only three reports have appeared in British journals (Shotton and Taylor, 1949; Denniss, Goldie, and Polson, 1954; Barry, Geoghegan, and Shea, 1955). The present case is reported with special reference to the techniques that are likely to help the pathologist faced by the problem of death from socalled obstetric shock.