Professor Sabaratnam Arulkumaran:

I can answer the first question about risk and whether we can categorise it as low risk, medium risk and high risk. There are problems in trying to categorise because risk is a continuous process. What can start as a little bit of risk can be a medium risk or a high risk within minutes to hours.

Therefore, it is sometimes dangerous in acute conditions to classify risk. A typical example is Savita Halappanavar. In her case, sepsis became severe sepsis and then septic shock within hours, so it is difficult. To take other conditions, for example, if the mother has renal disease or cardiac disease, that again can change very rapidly. What we might think of as a minor risk or mild risk in a renal condition, if she gets superimposed preeclampsia or hypertensive disease, it can suddenly become moderate to severe. The risk is something we can sometimes predict but we cannot judge, especially in pregnancy, because of rapidly changing sequences. Unlike a non-pregnant patient, pregnancy is quite dangerous both in the antenatal and intrapartum period.