BACKGROUND Many states have passed legislation mandating that health plans provide direct access to obstetricians/gynecologists (hereinafter "ob/gyns") for women, limiting the ability of plans to require referrals or otherwise restrict access. One benefit of these laws may be improved preventive screening rates, but no literature has examined the relationship between ob/gyn direct access laws a...

Introduction: Despite the fact that the clinical implementation of polymer gel dosimetry has been facilitated after the introduction of normoxic gels, there are still complications in its clinical routine use that are under investigation. In the current work, the feasibility of using a normoxic polymer gel dosimeter named MAGICA has been investigated for use in our clinical brachytherapy applic...

Intraoperative dosimetry during prostate brachytherapy is a long standing clinical problem. We propose a novel framework to address this problem by reliable detection of a subset of seeds from 3D transrectal ultrasound and registration to fluoroscopy. Seed detection in ultrasound is achieved through template matching in the RF ultrasound domain followed by thresholding and spatial filtering bas...

OBJECTIVE To determine whether obstetrics and gynecology (ob/gyn) patients in a large military teaching hospital have a negative attitude toward the wearing of surgical scrubs by ob/gyn providers. METHODS A convenience sample questionnaire on patient preferences, including two questions relating independently to military and civilian staff attire, was offered to clinic patients over a 2 month...

The need for more accurate radiation therapy treatment planning is driving improvements in radiation transport calculations. In particular, the inclusion of patient specific anatomy and tissue density heterogeneities will be very important, particularly for treatment modalities that involve strong material discontinuities. The study presented here compares the application of the deterministic c...

Kazuhiro Kawamura1,*, Yuan Cheng1, Ying-Pu Sun2, Jun Zhai2, Cesar Diaz-Garcia3, Carlos Simon3,4, Antonio Pellicer3, and Aaron J. Hsueh4,* Department of Ob/Gyn, St. Mariana University, Kawasaki, Japan Reproductive Medical Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China Fundación Instituto Valenciano de Infertilidad (FIVI), ValenciaUniversity and InstitutoUniversit...

Depression is the leading cause of disability among women of reproductive age worldwide. Upwards of 1 in 5 women suffer from perinatal depression. This condition has deleterious effects on several birth outcomes, infant attachment, and children’s behavior/development. Maternal suicide causes 20% of postpartum deaths in depressed women. Although the vast majority of perinatal women are amenable ...

OBJECTIVE The 23-valent pneumococcal vaccine is recommended for adults over 65 years of age and younger adults with certain medical conditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) state insufficient evidence to recommend routine pneumococcal vaccination during pregnancy, but the vaccine is indicated for pregnant women with certain medical conditions. We designed this project to...