Pediatrics

The ability to obtain emergency contraception (EC) directly from a pharmacist does not mean women would be more inclined to use it than if they only had access through a clinic, according to a randomized, controlled trial of over 2,000 women.

In what is perhaps the largest study to date to evaluate the impact of neonatal infection on adverse outcomes in early childhood, researchers have found that neonatal infections among extremely low-birthweight (ELBW) infants are associated with serious adverse neurodevelopmental and growth outcomes in early childhood that contribute to long-term disability.

Contrary to conventional medical wisdom, metformin compares favorably with insulin for controlling blood sugar in A2 gestational diabetes—GD with elevated fasting blood sugar levels.

About 91% of low-grade abnormalities on Pap smears in immunocompetent young women regress within 3 years of their finding, and only about 3% progress to high-grade disease, according to a recent cohort study. The findings provide strong support for the position that subjecting all young women with low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (LSIL) to colposcopy is unwarranted.

Celiac disease-once believed to be rare-actually affects up to 1% of the US population. So underdiagnosed is the problem that the National Institutes of Health convened a consensus panel, which recently announced recommendations for appropriate diagnosis and management of the disease.

In June 2000, I arrived a few minutes late to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' headquarters for a meeting of the Committee on Obstetric Practice. As Chair, I was used to dealing with political hot potatoes, but that day, I was handed a real sizzler. Earlier that morning, then ACOG president, Benjamin Harer, MD, speaking for himself and not the College, had seemingly endorsed "elective" cesarean deliveries (CD) in an interview with Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America." After watching an excerpt of the interview in which Dr. Harer debated a non-physician advocate of home VBACs attended by midwives, I was struck by the logic of his arguments and his grace under fire. Yet it fell to my committee to restate ACOG's official position against such surgeries, which we did in a press release

Your patient has a twin gestation at almost 29 weeks and one of the fetuses has IUGR. How should you proceed?

It's imperative to identify more HIV-infected women earlier in pregnancy through HIV testing and to reduce mother-to-child transmission of the virus that causes AIDS.

Learning that she has what used to be called premature menopause can devastate a woman in her 20s or 30s. Diagnose this mysterious condition without delay, deliver the bad news in person, and provide sensitiveanswers to four basic questions.

Ob/gyns should ensure that women have the information they need to make an informed decision about breastfeeding. This article addresses the two key concerns that new mothers most express about contraception and breastfeeding.

Ob/gyns with even a little gray hair have witnessed an extraordinary evolution in our collective thinking about cesarean delivery (CD) over the past three decades. I believe that a variety of factors are behind high CD rates in the United States, and that continued increases are inevitable.

Is it possible to be too cautious about prescribing medication to a breastfeeding patient? Absolutely. Two experts in this area provide an informed, balanced perspective.

Thanks to advances in U/S technology, clinicians can now detect ventricular enlargement in its earliest stages. Unfortunately, a few fetuses with borderline ventriculomegaly still have chromosomal or structural malformations.

Using a technique called super crowning, avoiding episiotomy, and reaching for a vacuum device rather than forceps during operative vaginal deliveries are among the strategies that can help reduce the number of third- and fourth-degree lacerations.

We may have seen the first glimmer of light in the otherwise dark tunnel of the professional liability insurance crisis. On July 12, during a speech at the National Press Club, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist proposed "an expert medical court system with transparent decisions, limits on punitive damages, and scheduled compensatory damages to provide rapid relief to truly injured patients (instead of trial lawyers)" while holding negligent doctors accountable.

An expert in the field provides a balanced approach to protecting patients from this potentially lethal infection.