Biomedical researchers aid in car safety for pregnant women.

Biomedical researchers and car manufacturers are now working hand in hand to make automobile travel  safer for pregnant women and develop better crash protection features in future vehicle design.Almost all automobile manufactures take into account infant and children safety in their designs.But recent estimates  shows that over 300 or more fetal deaths occurs annually as a result of vehicle crashes which is four times higher than number of victims between infancy and 4 years. Overall, about 27,000 vehicle occupants died in car crashes in 2008, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration with auto accidents being the single largest cause of death for pregnant women.This has slowly shifted the focus of car safety on pregnant women as well.

Stefan Duma, head of the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences in Blacksburg, Va., is involved in this research project which is partly funded by Ford. Researchers used data from computerized tomography, or CT, scans taken at Wake Forest’s hospital to determine the dimensions of a fetus, uterus and placenta at 30 weeks’ gestation.To find out what actually happens inside the body of a pregnant woman during an accident,they tested varying forces’ effects on actual uterine and placental tissue samples.This would help devise a more accurate simulation of how crashes affect women and their fetuses. It was found that majority of fetal deaths occur when the force of the crash tears the placenta from the uterus, which cuts off oxygen to the fetus.To aid in their study computerized human body models representing humans in intricate detail, and duplicate bones, organs and tissues of the human body were used, and such models may lead to the development of more lifelike “pregnant” crash-test dummies in the future.

Ford safety researcher Stephen Rouhana is optimistic about the fact that the data gathered during the project could be ultimately used to improve safety features in the company’s vehicles. Though any changes to restraint and crash-protection systems won’t happen immediately, automakers plan to highlight pregnant occupants’ safety needs. Ford, for example, plans to have the manuals for its 2011 models specifically instruct pregnant women on seatbelt safety, based on guidelines for patients from the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.