Pregnancy and Birth

We've all seen her on the street or in the supermarket: A frail, elderly woman with a stooped upper back. She used to be several inches taller than she is now. It's just something that happens as we get older, we think.

It used to be only professional models, actresses and dancers who starved themselves to look thin. Today, it's a way of life for many Generation X women. Not only are they eating less, many are exercising to excess, cutting out dairy products altogether and smoking more.

A young woman (P.A.) suffered from back pain for almost 2 years before contacting our Bone Metabolic Unit in 1996. She was a beautiful South-Italian woman, 26 years old, with dark eyes, dark hair, and an olive complexion.

In this era of constrained health-care resources, a critical need exists for efficient, measurable systems of disease management that strike a balance between social responsibility and patient welfare.

In a recent study of women with repeated miscarriages and fibroids, researchers found that removing them significantly increased the live birth rate. This increase was noted with both fibroids that distorted the uterine cavity as well as those that did not.

Test your ob/gyn knowledge in our DailyDx.

Diethylstilbestrol, or DES, a synthetic form of estrogen, was prescribed from the early 1940s until 1971 to help women with certain complications of pregnancy, primarily miscarriages. Use of DES declined in the 1960s after studies showed that it might not be effective in preventing pregnancy complications.

Infertility is a disease that affects the reproductive organs of both men and women. It impairs one of the body’s most basic functions: the ability to have children. Infertility affects about 6.1 million people in the United States alone; ten percent of the reproductive-age population-both men and women.

The following statements are a general consensus and my personal view, but takes into account the establishment of a correct diagnosis of PCOS, the probability of combined complaints, and the presence or absence of a significant associated adrenal androgen hormonal production.

A conversation with Dr. Henry Lerner

The process of having a miscarriage can be frightening, painful, and tremendously disappointing. If you had just had a miscarriage, you may be upset and confused about what you have just been through. You may feel that something you did brought on your miscarriage. You may be fearful that you will never have a baby--or another baby, if you already have children.

Osteoporosis is a disease that is caused by significant bone loss, which leaves the bones weak and at an increased risk for fracture. It is diagnosed clinically when a patient has a history of certain types of fractures, or by the use of special X-ray studies such as a DEXA scan.

In humans, serotonin has typically been investigated as a neurotransmitter. However, serotonin also functions as a hormone across animal phyla, including those lacking an organized central nervous system. This hormonal action allows serotonin to have physiological consequences in systems outside the central nervous system. Fluctuations in estrogen levels over the lifespan and during ovarian cycles cause predictable changes in serotonin systems in female mammals.

By some estimates, as many as 80% of women will have fibroids at some point in their lives. And, although many women are asymptomatic, their presence can cause extreme pain in some women and also may be a factor in infertility issues, with submucosal, intramural and subserosal fibroids (in a decreasing order of importance) impacting infertility. Moreover, some research has linked the presence of uterine fibroids with recurrent miscarriage in women, but the data thus far had been inconclusive.

Reassuring news for clinicians treating pregnant patients with cancer: chemotherapy does not appear to cause developmental problems in offspring. Dr Frederic Amant, assistant professor, staff gynecologic oncologist, and head of the scientific section of gynecologic oncology at Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, presented these findings at the 2011 European Multidisciplinary Cancer Congress.

The International Consensus adopted by the IFFS is an up-to-date focus on modern techniques of Assisted Medical Procreation (AMP), with respect to the reasons for which they have been proposed, the conditions for their realization and their possible risks.

Thinning hair due to the effects of male hormones (androgens) is called androgenic alopecia. It is a major source of psychological distress to women. This male-pattern hair loss is often seen in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), congenital adrenal hyperplasia, and other disorders of male hormone excess.

While it is true that IVF maximizes a patient’s chance of conceiving quickly, the sad fact is that IVF has become very complex today. Normally, as a technology matures, it usually becomes simpler and easier to implement, but this has not been true with IVF, especially the way it is done in most IVF clinics in the USA today.

Miscarriages (pregnancy loss ) are extremely common and occur in about 10% of all pregnancies. The loss of a pregnancy in a normally fertile woman hurts, but when a woman who has conceived after taking treatment for her infertility problems loses her pregnancy, the loss is far more difficult to bear.

There are several steps that each woman should take before she even tries to become pregnant. A visit to a gynecologist (or qualified internist) should occur at least three months before a couple is ready to conceive. During this visit, a full physical examination should be done.

I am 28 years old and I've been actively trying to get pregnant for the past 2 years. I recently underwent a laparoscopy by my gynecologist. She told me that I had minimal endometriosis, but that my ovaries and tubes looked normal. She told me that endometriosis is associated with infertility, but I don't really understand the connection.

Human beings are remarkably fertile. Most females are capable of conceiving and bearing children beginning in their mid-teen years. While women in industrialized societies usually bear children in their 20s and 30s, women can give birth well into their 40s and beyond.

Select a letter to jump to that section

Norma Larrea, of Mexico City, was 47 when she got osteoporosis. "I couldn't do my household chores and had pain throughout my body," she recalls. Her doctor did not diagnose osteoporosis. Eventually, after considerable suffering, a specialist in osteoporosis diagnosed her properly and treated her for the disease. Norma was lucky. Although her diagnosis was late, it came before she broke any bones.

The coming of the Internet can be compared with the birth of your first child. Everyone tells you that it will change your life beyond belief and you think you have understood what they mean and that you are perfectly prepared... until the day arrives.

How should you start searching for websites in the field of gynaecology? Of course, you could start at the FIGO website (http://www.figo.org), where there is much useful information. FIGO has 101 member societies, of which about 25 have their own websites at this moment.

The Internet has the potential to revolutionise the way we obtain and disseminate medical information. There is an enormous volume and variety of health-related information on the Internet [1, 2]. Some information available on the Internet about perinatology (aimed at professionals) is discussed here. We restrict ourselves mainly to websites for professionals in the English language.

The diagnostic sonography (ultrasound) profession is populated by technophiles. In general, people who gravitate to ultrasound are not afraid of technology or computers. For this reason alone, it is not surprising that sonographers and sonologists have flocked to use the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) for education, consultations and communications with colleagues across the globe.

Logging on to the Internet, particularly as a lay person, the sheer volume of information is alarming, and there is often no indication of how up to date it is and from which sources it was drawn.

During the last decade, the production of medical information has doubled every 2 years. It is predicted that information will double at an even faster rate, i.e. every 1–3 months [1]. This dramatic rate of changing medical knowledge presents a challenge for physicians to keep themselves up to date.