In a conversation among characters Deirdre O'Bannon, Ian O'Bannon and Officer Matthew Ryan, Officer Ryan thanks med student Deirdre O'Bannon for saving his sister and her newborn by diagnosing a placenta previa. Deirdre then described placenta previa as the baby's umbilical being wrapped around its neck. Placenta previa is actually a condition whereby the placenta grows and stays unusually low in the uterus, sometimes completely covering the cervix, and may cause bleeding, or life-threatening hemorrhaging. While the two conditions could happen simultaneously, they are not one and the same.