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What does the placenta do? Learn about the placenta!: Garden OB/GYN: Obstetrics

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What is the placenta exactly?

The placenta is frequently talked about during pregnancy, but do you know what it is?

It’s an organ! The placenta develops when you become pregnant as a way to protect and nurture your developing baby. It then leaves your body through the birthing canal following the birth of your baby. It’s actually essential that the entire placenta leaves your body following birth, otherwise you may experience bleeding or an infection. So, if you were wondering if you always have a placenta your whole life, the answer is you don’t! It only exists during pregnancy.

What is the purpose of the placenta?

Think of it as the organ of life. The mother’s placenta is connected to her baby through the umbilical cord. Through this connection, the placenta is able to filter and deliver important nutrients to the developing baby, including oxygen. The placenta also keeps your baby’s body safe and healthy by removing waste products from your baby’s blood. Amazingly, the placenta enables the support, nourishment, and protection of the baby, all without the mother’s and baby’s blood mixing, preventing infections in the baby.

Where is the placenta?

It is attached to your uterus’ wall at either the top, side, front or back.

Can there be issues with the placenta?

A condition known as placenta previa occurs if the placenta attaches to the bottom of the uterus. This condition usually resolves itself as the pregnancy progresses, but if the placenta is covering the cervix during labor, a caesarean section will be necessary.

Placenta accreta occurs if the placenta does not attach to the uterus or is improperly attached, which may result in heavy bleeding and can be life-threatening.

If you experience placental abruption, it means the placenta has become detached from the uterus prematurely, before labor. This condition will impact the delivery of nutrients to the baby and may require early delivery of the baby.

What can I do to keep my placenta healthy?

To keep your placenta and baby healthy, be sure to go to all your regular pregnancy check-ups with your obstetrician. This can ensure routine monitoring of your body and pregnancy so that any possible issues can be detected early.

Abstain from alcohol and any drug use, including smoking cigarettes.

Notify your doctor of any medications or supplements you are taking and also be sure to inform them of any prior placenta issues you may have had with previous pregnancies.

If you have further questions about placentas and/or pregnancy, we encourage you to ask your healthcare provider or schedule a consult with one of our pregnancy expert Garden OB/GYN Obstetricians. Contact one of our office locations or book an appointment online to schedule your visit!

Sources:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/in-depth/placenta/art-20044425

https://www.pregnancybirthbaby.org.au/what-is-the-placenta

All About the Menstrual Cycle: Understanding Your Monthly Visitor

Are you tired of feeling confused about your menstrual cycle? Do you often wonder what is happening inside your body during this time of the month? Look no further! In this blog post, we will dive into the ins and outs of the menstrual cycle.

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For many women heartburn can become quite the nuisance during pregnancy, even if they rarely experienced heartburn in the past. Many women experience frequent and/or very bothersome acid reflux.

High Blood Pressure in Pregnancies, Pre-Eclampsia and Eclampsia

If noted early in pregnancy then it is called chronic hypertension, if noted late in pregnancy it is called Pre-Eclampsia. Medicine should be started to keep the blood pressure below 140/90

New COVID-19 Protocol at Affiliated Hospitals

If you are planning to deliver a baby at Katz Women’s Hospital or a LIJ Hospital, you can visit our office to get a COVID-19 test or vaccine. To help our patients and communities stay safe, Garden OB/GYN is offering COVID-19 testing & vaccines.

Considering Sterilization or Tubal Ligation?

Considering Sterilization or Tubal Ligation? Having your partner receive a vasectomy is likely a safer, less risky, and more affordable permanent birth control option.

10 amazing facts about the placenta

Home "News" 10 amazing facts about the placenta

10.10.2020

Liat Ben -Senior, MBA MSC

Placenta - this is a rescue circle between mother and her child, the organ in which the connection between them is first established. Scientists consider the placenta the least studied human organ, but one of the most important organs of the body. It affects the health of a woman and her baby during and even after pregnancy. In honor of the incredible properties of the placenta, we list 10 amazing facts about it.

Emma Jean Photography

1. Small but powerful - the parachute-shaped placenta is a highly specialized organ that helps support your baby's development. The middle placenta is 23 cm across, about 3 cm thick and usually weighs 500-600 grams. The blood of mother and baby passes through the placenta but never mixes. At term, about 500 ml of mother's blood passes through the placenta every minute. This alone is amazing (and also explains why pregnancy is so exhausting).


2. One organ, many functions - Your developing baby does not eat or breathe and relies solely on its mother for nutrients and oxygen. The placenta acts like a baby's lungs, supplying oxygen and removing carbon dioxide. It also acts like a baby's kidneys, filtering waste products from the bloodstream.


3. The placenta is not a maternal organ - In fact, the placenta develops from a fertilized egg, which means that, like a child, it is genetically half from mom and half from dad. The placenta begins to form as soon as a fertilized egg implants in the uterine wall, about 6-7 days after conception, and continues to grow with your baby to meet her growing needs.


4. The placenta is also a gland - The placenta acts like a gland, releasing hormones during pregnancy that are important in supporting your growing baby and preparing your body for motherhood.


5. The placenta is an immune mediator - The placenta helps the mother's and baby's immune systems to talk to each other without fighting. During pregnancy, the placenta prevents the mother's body from perceiving the child as foreign and from attacking it. During the 3rd trimester, the placenta allows mom's antibodies to pass to the baby, giving your baby a booster immune system, and this protection lasts up to 6 months after birth.


6. Identical twins can share a placenta - Fraternal twins develop from two separate fertilized eggs and will always have two placentas. But the number of placentas in identical twins is determined by whether the fertilized egg splits before or after the formation of the placenta.


7. Your baby's stem cells are coming to you - baby's stem cells can cross the placenta and seem to target areas where the mother has been damaged. Even years later, small amounts of cells from previous pregnancies can be found in the mother's skin, organs, and bone marrow. This phenomenon is called "microchimerism of the fetus and mother."


8. The only disposable organ - the placenta will re-develop with each pregnancy to support your baby's growth. After completing its mission, the placenta comes out after the baby is born, which is why it is called the "afterbirth".


9. The placenta prepares your body for breastfeeding - The placenta produces a hormone that inhibits the production of breast milk. After the placenta is delivered, the mother's body receives a signal that it is time to produce milk.


10. The placenta can help us fight cancer - The placenta has the unique ability to grow and enter the mother's body without being attacked by the immune system. This ability to evade the immune system is highly regulated, and the placenta knows how to stop intrusion before harming the mother. The researchers hope that a better understanding of how the placenta works will help us fight cancers that elude the immune system.

The placenta is not only a wonderful organ during pregnancy, but for life. If you choose to donate or save placental stem cells, they will not be disposed of as biological waste.

Liat Ben-Senior holds an MBA and MSc in Human Genetics from the Sackler School of Medicine of Tel-Aviv University, Israel. She has over 15 years of experience in Marketing and Digital Marketing in the field of Biotech and Life Sciences. Her scientific background includes immunology and molecular biology research, both in academia as well as industry. Her management background includes business development and commercialization of early stage medical devices, cellular, and small molecule therapies. For over a decade, Liat worked with CReATe Cord Blood Bank as Business Manager. At CReATe, Liat focused on educating expectant parents and health care professionals about the cord blood banking options available in the Canadian market. Starting in 2020, Liat is the Marketing Manager at Anova Fertility & Reproductive Health. Liat strongly believes in empowering expectant parents so they can make an informed decision.

Maternity hospital №7, Novosibirsk - What is the placenta?

Anna Valentinovna Yakimova, obstetrician-gynecologist, MD talks about the placenta and placental insufficiency.

Picture from the site http://s7ya7.zdorovo-zivi.ru

Placenta. The name of the organ comes from lat. placenta - cake, cake, pancake. This is an extra-embryonic organ, consisting of villi, thanks to which the fetus is nourished, respired, and waste products are removed from its blood. There are free and fixing (anchor) villi. The placenta is formed in the place where the embryo was implanted, arises as a result of the connection of the chorion - extraembryonic tissue with a thickened uterine mucosa (decidual tissue). Despite the fact that the blood of the mother and fetus does not mix, as they are separated by the placental barrier, the fetus receives all the necessary nutrients and oxygen from the mother's blood. In addition, the placenta produces hormones that ensure the preservation of pregnancy. The placenta has two surfaces. The surface that faces the fetus is called the fetal. It is covered with a smooth shell - the amnion, through which large vessels shine through. The one that is attached to the wall of the uterus is called maternal.

The main structural unit of the placenta is cotelidone. Cotyledon of the placenta is conditionally comparable to a tree. Each cotyledon is formed by a stem villus, from which, like branches of a tree, villi of the second and third order extend, containing vessels. The central part of the cotyledon forms a cavity, which is surrounded by many villi. Between the cotyledons there is a space - mejvirus, which on the maternal side is limited by partitions (septa) extending from the mucous membrane of the uterus. Most of the placental villi are freely immersed in the intervillous space (free villi) and are bathed in maternal blood. The spiral arteries, which are small branches of the arteries that supply the uterus, open into the intervillous space and supply oxygen-rich blood to the intervillous space. Due to the pressure difference, which is higher in the mother's arterial bed compared to the intervillous space, oxygenated blood from the mouths of the spiral arteries is directed through the center of the cotyledon to the villi, washes them, reaches the chorionic plate and returns to the maternal circulation through the venous orifices through the separating septa. . In this case, the blood flow of the mother and fetus are separated from each other. Those. maternal and fetal blood does not mix. Thus, the concept of the placental barrier appears: the blood of the mother of the fetus does not mix, because they are separated by the wall of the villus, loose connective tissue inside the villus and the wall of the vessel that is inside the villus, and in which the blood of the fetus circulates.

At the end of pregnancy, the placenta is a soft disk 15-18 cm in diameter, 2-4 cm thick in the central part, weighing about 500-600 g. their capillaries - 12 m2. The placenta, membranes, and umbilical cord together form the afterbirth, which is expelled from the uterus after the baby is born.

Normally, the placenta is attached to the uterine cavity on its anterior or posterior surface, sometimes in the fundus. If the placenta is attached in the lower part of the uterine cavity, close to the internal opening of the cervix - the internal pharynx, then its blood supply is often insufficient and the fetus may suffer from lack of oxygen and nutrients - a phenomenon called placental insufficiency occurs.

Placental insufficiency is a violation of all or some of the functions of the placenta, ultimately leading to oxygen starvation (hypoxia), fetal growth retardation or death and / or early termination of pregnancy.

Placental insufficiency may occur early in pregnancy due to impaired placental formation, for example, if the spiral arteries that supply blood to the villi do not lose the ability to narrow their lumen in response to exposure to vasoconstrictor substances. It is possible that there is a violation of the development of blood vessels inside the villi, the vessels can form in the central part of the villus, and not close to its wall, then the transfer of nutrients from the mother's blood to the fetal blood and the flow of metabolic products back will be difficult. The process of development of the placenta (in particular, vascular formation) occurs to a greater extent in the first and second trimesters of pregnancy, ending at about 30-32 weeks. After this period, involutive processes predominate ("aging", immuring the villi with fibrinoid). Along with the processes of involution in the placenta during pregnancy, young villi develop, more often avascular, which, however, only partially compensate for the function of mature villi containing vessels that have “fallen out” of the circulation.

In another scenario, placental insufficiency occurs at a later date, as a result of damage to the placenta in inflammatory processes, diabetes in a pregnant woman, or high blood pressure, when blood flow to the uterus is disturbed, which can also occur with increased maternal blood clotting . It is believed that it is the violation of the uteroplacental circulation that plays the main role in the formation of the intrauterine growth retardation syndrome. Before the advent of Doppler ultrasound research methods in obstetric practice, there were no non-invasive methods for studying blood flow in the mother-placenta-fetus system. To date, Doppler is the most preferred instrumental method that provides useful information in relation to the detection of blood flow disorders and the determination of pregnancy management tactics for placental insufficiency. If there are symptoms of placental insufficiency - a mismatch in the height of the uterine fundus, signs of a threat of early termination of pregnancy, rapid or slow fetal heart rate (normal: 120-160 beats per minute), an altered amount of amniotic fluid - it is necessary to conduct an ultrasound examination, Doppler blood flow in the vessels of the uterus, umbilical cord and fetus, and in the third trimester - cardiotocography. The earliest sign of placental dysfunction is a decrease in its production of hormones and proteins, therefore, in pregnant women with a known risk of placental dysfunction (for example, if she has a chronic inflammatory process or often / constantly increased blood pressure, etc.), you can examine the level placental lactogen, progesterone, unconjugated estriol in the blood. And on the basis of the data obtained, predict the further development of pregnancy and take preventive measures.

Can placental insufficiency be treated? The answer to this question is ambiguous. It is possible to influence the development of the placenta when it is incomplete, improving the conditions for development - by eliminating, for example, the inflammatory process, normalizing blood pressure, lowering the tone of the uterus, and normalizing blood clotting. You can influence the metabolism in the cells of the placenta - by doing this, for example, by introducing drugs into the body of a pregnant woman that help improve the utilization of glucose by cells. It is possible to influence the tone of the vessels, reduce the permeability of the wall and, in this way, the swelling of the tissues decreases and the penetration of oxygen into them improves. But we must understand that we do not cure placental insufficiency, we are only trying to influence the compensatory mechanisms that exist in the placenta, if this succeeds, the manifestations of placental insufficiency disappear. But more often, treatment is aimed at prolonging the pregnancy to the term of a viable fetus.

But if the signs of placental insufficiency increase, and the gestation period is more than 32 weeks, when even in a normal placenta it undergoes involution, the placenta initially developed incorrectly, and now it performs its functions worse, the fetus suffers, then it is useless to treat placental insufficiency, it is better to carry out early delivery and to nurse the newborn without the risk of intrauterine death, which is possible if the placenta depletes its reserves.

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