BACKGROUND Glucocorticoids play a critical role in normative regulation of fetal brain development. Exposure to excessive levels may have detrimental consequences and disrupt maturational processes. This may especially be true when synthetic glucocorticoids are administered during the fetal period, as they are to women in preterm labor. This study investigated the consequences for brain develop...

Recent decades have brought significant progress in understanding the role of cytokines in many aspects of the development of periodontal disease associated with systemic disorders and increased risk of oral cancer. A thorough search of articles was carried out on the databases PubMed on the association of periodontal disease and obstetric pathologies, systemic diseases and cancer. Refs cited a...

Numerous medical, surgical, psychiatric, gynecologic, and obstetric disorders can cause abdominal pain during pregnancy. The patient history, physical examination, laboratory data, and radiologic findings usually provide the diagnosis. The pregnant woman has physiologic alterations that affect the clinical presentation, including atypical normative laboratory values. Abdominal ultrasound is gen...

Abstract To investigate the possible association of obstetric complications and autistic disorder, we performed a review of case-control studies of any obstetric complication in autistic disorder. If the odds ratio = {(Number of cases with autistic disorder with any obstetric complication) / (Number of cases with autistic disorder without any obstetric complication)}/{(Number of controls withou...

CONTEXT It has long been a concern that professional liability problems disproportionately affect the delivery of obstetrical services to women living in rural areas. Michigan, a state with a large number of rural communities, is considered to be at risk for a medical liability crisis. PURPOSE This study examined whether higher malpractice burden on obstetric providers was associated with an ...

Ginosar, et al. describe a new performance indicator, the Obstetric Anesthesia Activity Index, to represent the current amount of obstetric anesthesia work done daily at each of 25 Israeli hospitals. The authors claim, correctly, that this index is a closer reflection of the anesthetic workload than simply looking at the number of deliveries at each hospital. However, the Obstetric Anesthesia A...

OBJECTIVES Mortality prediction scores have been used for a long time in ICUs; however, numerous studies have shown that they over-predict mortality in the obstetric population. With sepsis remaining a major cause of obstetric mortality, we aimed to look at five mortality prediction scores (one obstetric-based and four general) in the septic obstetric population and compare them to a nonobstetr...

Offspring of parents with bipolar disorder (BD) are at high risk for psychiatric disorders, but mechanisms conferring risk are not well understood. Identifying and understanding factors that increase offspring vulnerability may inform intervention efforts. Three studies examined the following risk factors: (1) obstetric complications (OCs); (2) family functioning; and (3) clinical characteristi...

Alcohol abuse and other substance use disorders are major, often underdiagnosed health problems for women, regardless of age, race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, and have resulting high costs for individuals and society. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, defines substance use disorder as a pathologic pattern of behaviors related to the use of any o...

Screening and diagnostic testing play fundamental roles in all fields of clinical medicine, with obstetric imaging and prenatal diagnosis being no exceptions. With advances in maternal serum screening and ultrasound technology, much research effort in the field of pre-natal diagnosis has actually been dedicated to the development and refinement of screening tests for fetal aneuploidy and other ...