All News

According to a recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there was a 5-fold rise in deaths of women who abused prescription opioid pain medicine from 1999 to 2010 (6631 deaths in 2010, up from 1287 in 1999).

Properly timing subsequent pregnancies is important for both mothers and babies. It’s often accomplished with postpartum contraception, which may be out of reach for low-income women. A recent study in Obstetrics & Gynecology looked at how prescription of postpartum contraception through publicly funded programs affects the interval between pregnancies.

Obstetricians often see pregnant patients with psychiatric disorders, the most common being depression. Treatment includes both nonpharmacologic and pharmacologic options. This article focuses on use of selective serotonin reputake inhibitors (SSRIs), the drugs most often used to treat depression in pregnancy.

Incidence of gastroschisis among newborns appears to be on the rise, with the proportion of babies born with the rare defect almost doubling since 1995, new research shows.

When it comes to securing and protecting patient health information, physician practices with fewer than 50 providers fared the worst in a recent audit by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

The common practice of clamping an umbilical cord within a minute of birth to reduce the possibility of maternal hemorrhaging may need to be revised, according to a new paper published in The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews. The study authors searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group’s Trials Register to find 15 trials involving a total of 3911 mother and infant pairs. The risk of bias in the trials was considered by the paper’s authors to be moderate in nature.

If women are prediabetic when giving birth, they may find it difficult to make enough breast milk to feed their newborns, according to new research from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and the University of California, Davis. The findings show that insulin dysregulation can negatively impact milk supply.

The current treatment of mild gestational diabetes mellitus results in fewer cases of preeclampsia, shoulder dystocia, and macrosomia but seems to have no effect on neonatal hypoglycemia or future poor metabolic outcomes, concluded a systematic review and meta-analysis.

After rising steadily for nearly a decade, the rate of cesarean deliveries appears to have stabilized, according to a new report (www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db124.pdf) from the National Center for Health Statistics. New guidelines and policies encouraging longer gestations have led to a trend of cesarean deliveries occurring more frequently at 39 weeks than at 38 weeks.