Dr. Anne Pham-Huy discusses how to recommend vaccines to patients who are pregnant.
When recommending vaccines for a pregnant patient, you can typically recommend any of the non-live vaccines approved for use in Canada if you believe that your patient needs to receive one or more of them. However, there are three main vaccines that you should recommend in every pregnancy – the Tdap vaccine, to protect specifically against pertussis, the COVID-19 vaccine, and the influenza vaccine.
If you have a patient who is pregnant, reassure them that these vaccines have a good safety record, and that getting these vaccines while pregnant allows them to pass on short-term protection against pertussis, COVID-19, and influenza to their baby. This is especially important in the case of pertussis, as pertussis is most severe in infants too young to be immunized.
You should also let your patient know that catching pertussis or influenza while pregnant can lead to giving birth prematurely, having their baby born with low birth weight, or having their baby delivered stillborn. However, if they get immunized against these diseases while pregnant and then catch either disease during that same pregnancy, they are much less likely to experience these complications.
The COVID-19 vaccine is particularly recommended for pregnant people, as catching COVID-19 while pregnant can lead to complications such as hospitalization, the baby being born with low birth weight, and premature birth. Pregnancy complications that could occur due to COVID-19 infection should be discussed with your patient.
For more information, please visit Immunize Canada's website: [ Ссылка ]
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