Peninsula People Sept 2017

Dr.
Delivery
Dr. Jerry Schwartz, head of Torrance Memorial’s neonatology department. Photo by Esther Kang
Torrance Memorial neonatology director Dr. Jerry Schwartz brings multidisciplinary
teams and newest technology into the delivery room
by Esther Kang
Inside his quiet office on the fifth floor of Torrance Memorial’s Neonatal
Intensive Care Unit, Dr. Jerry Schwartz recalled in a soft voice a delivery
last Christmas Eve that was unprecedented in his 29-year career as the
department’s medical director.
Schwartz, who is Jewish, works a 24-hour shift every Christmas. On this
particular evening, a mother began experiencing the acute onset of severe
fetal distress. The fetus’ heart rate was dropping to dangerously low levels.
As nurses wheeled the mother into the operating room for an emergency
C-section, he learned the situation was more dire than usual. The mother
was having an amniotic fluid embolism, a rare condition during childbirth
when the amniotic fluid enters the mother’s bloodstream. The result can
be multiple organ failures.
Within moments of entering the operating room, the mother went into
full cardiac arrest. While the code blue team began performing CPR on one
side of the table, Schwartz and his labor and delivery staff performed a C-
section on the other side. There were about 18 people in the operating
room. It was like a ballet, Schwartz said.
“The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Not a word was spoken."
The baby was born without a heartbeat and required a full resuscitation.
The mother, after being closed up, was wheeled into intensive care.
“Both survived,” he said. “I’d never seen this in 29 years, a full maternal
arrest leading to fetal distress.”
Schwartz prides himself on the efficacy of his multi-specialized neonatal
team. The team includes six board-certified neonatologists, approximately
50 labor and delivery nurses and several in-house obstetrician-anesthesiologists.
During his nearly three decades at the helm of the department, the
Palos Verdes resident has bolstered the unit’s resources to include advanced
technologies not commonly found in community hospitals. These include
high-frequency ventilators, non-invasive nasal mechanical ventilation
equipment, inhaled nitric oxide therapy and therapeutic hypothermia.
These resources enable the team to treat most high-risk newborns.
Soon, Torrance Memorial’s neonatal unit will move to the newly completed,
$450 million Melanie and Richard Lundquist Tower. The tower’s
new neonatal unit includes 23 private rooms with around the clock ameni-
62 Peninsula • September 2017