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First Trimester Screening for Aneuploidy
In my November 29, 2006 post, I promised that my “next post” would focus on a discussion of first trimester screening for aneuploidy. It has taken awhile to get back to this, having had a few distractions along the way, but blogging does offer so...
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Grand Rounds 4.30 at Women's Health News - Thanks Rachel!
Sincere thanks to Rachel at Women's Health News for including a link to my recent post "Pancreatic Cancer Takes Another Young Life" in this week's Grand Rounds 4.30. The post was written in memory of my brother-in-law, John Darrek Offutt, who succ...
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Second Verse Different from the First!
Today was a very special day for me. I delivered a young woman who had a perfectly normal 7lb 7oz baby boy at 39 weeks’ gestation. What made her so special was that her pregnancy outcome the last time around was not so wonderful; the success with ...
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Thank you Paul S. Auerbach, MD
On Thanksgiving Day, I always try to reflect on the things I have been grateful for in my life. It dawned on me as I awoke yesterday morning that one of the people I have been most thankful for, and never told, is an old friend, and fellow Health...
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MTHFR Mutations and Congenital Heart Defects
This afternoon, I attended a ‘focus group’ devoted to congenital heart disease and fetal cardiology. As we have discussed on other occasions, fetal heart defects are the most common abnormalities a baby can have, affecting about 1% of all pregnan...
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More from the 2007 Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Meeting in San Francisco
There were several very interesting presentations today at the Annual SMFM Meeting in San Francisco. Two of these described animal experiments that will undoubtedly have an impact on how we approach the management of certain medical and genetic c...
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Repetitive Miscarriages: Engender Fear and Require Patience
I received the comment below from one of our readers and my response, though abbreviated, is relevant to many of our readers who have suffered unexplained pregnancy losses. She has lost two early pregnancies and, understandably, is "scared" about ...
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Hypertensive Disorders in Pregnancy - 3
In our last two posts, we have discussed the general significance of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy and the spectrum of pregnancy-induced hypertensive disorders classified as preeclampsia. The problem with preeclampsia is that most of the tim...
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Diabetes in Pregnancy -1 - Overview of an Epidemic
Today we admitted a 25 year old woman to the hospital that has Class R/F diabetes and is 9 weeks pregnant. I will explain what ‘Class R/F’ means later on but, simply put, it’s not good because both her kidneys and her eyes have suffered severe da...
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Low Early Pregnancy 'Hormone' Levels: hCG and Progesterone
The two recent readers shared their stories with us regarding early pregnancies complicated by “low hormone levels” and subsequently loss of their babies. Many questions arise regarding what it means to have low human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG...
