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Drugs and Fetal Development: Focus, Valproic Acid
Recently, I was interviewed by a reporter who was interested in discussing stages of fetal development and factors that might contribute to congenital abnormalities during the same. This was a reminder to me that I have wanted to review recent co...
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A Loss of Twins and Missed Opportunities for Cerclage
Recently, a reader left the comment below. The value and use of cervical cerclage continues to come into question. There are major institutions in this country where it is not considered to be a useful procedure and have abandoned or severely li...
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Grand Rounds 4.02 at Musings of a Distractible Mind
Compliments to Dr. Rob at Musings of a Distractible Mind for a most bodacious, though occasionally loquacious, Grand Rounds 4.02 tribute to Dr. Seuss. Ya gotta read it to believe it! And many thanks 'midst all the rhyme in semiperfect time for i...
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X-Linked Hydrocephalus - 2 - HSAS/MASA Spectrum of Disease
Yesterday we began a discussion of “X-linked hydrocephalus.” As we pointed out, this is not a single disease entity, but a spectrum of overlapping syndromes that are characterized by variable expression of Corpus callosum hypoplasia, Retardation,...
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SSRIs and Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension
Freshly oxygenated blood from the placenta enters the baby through the umbilical vein. Some of this blood is diverted into the liver before traveling to the heart and the rest goes directly to the heart through a blood vessel, called the ductus v...
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Quintuplet Story: A Physician's Perspective - 4
On April 6, 2007, at 27 6/7 weeks, Joy began having more “pelvic pressure” and the decision was made to give her corticosteroids to accelerate fetal lung maturation. Serial ultrasounds had shown that one of the babies was developing intrauterine ...
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Grand Rounds 3.29 - Thanks Dr. Dork!
Many thanks to Dr. Dork at Blogspot.com for including a link to my summary post on the basic evaluation of the woman (couple) with recurrent early pregnancy loss in this week's Grand Rounds 3.29. Gathering from the response I have gotten to my se...
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Low PAPP-A and Celiac Disease in Pregnancy
One of the reasons I love the comments we get from our readers is that they often make me look at pregnancy-related conditions and complications from a different perspective. I stated from the outset of this blog that I was looking forward to par...
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Breast Cancer During Pregnancy - Overview
This month is “Breast Cancer Awareness Month.” According to 2005 American Cancer Society estimates, 211,240 women developed breast cancer and 40,410 died from the disease that year. The risk for breast cancer rises with age and the lifetime risk...
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Percutaneous Umbilical Blood Sampling (PUBS)
In several previous posts, we addressed issues related to invasive diagnostic fetal testing, covering amniocentesis (early and midtrimester) and chorionic villus sampling. I got side-tracked by the ACOG Meeting in San Diego and just remembered tha...
