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Nearly all ob/gyns consider the bimanual pelvic examination a very important part of the well-woman checkup, and sometimes perform the examination unnecessarily in asymptomatic women, according to the results of a nationwide survey.

Researchers at the Wake Forest School of Medicine in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, have found that regaining weight after losing it may be harmful to the health of postmenopausal women.

A study published online by the journal Environmental Research found that 55.8% of women ages 16 to 49 had blood levels of lead, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) that exceeded the median.

Noninvasive fetal diagnosis

Instead of invasive procedures such as chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis, definitive, noninvasive testing for fetal chromosomal abnormalities has long been the "holy grail" in obstetrics. It now appears practical to achieve prenatal genetic diagnosis using cell-free fetal dna in maternal blood.

Apps for your practice

A look at the new technology available for stethoscopes, endoscopy, and otoscope.

The effects of exercise during and after cancer treatment are different, according to the findings of a new systematic review. Researchers concluded that exercise has a palliative effect in patients during cancer treatment and a recuperative effect after treatment.

A cross-sectional nationwide Canadian epidemiological study suggests that marriage rather than cohabitation may have psychosocial benefits for pregnant women. Published in theAmerican Journal of Public Health, the results point to a need for research on maternal and child health that distinguishes between married and unmarried cohabiting women.

A study published online by the Archives of Internal Medicine reports that women who are screened for the BRCA gene and found not to be carriers often undergo ovarian Ca screening, despite the fact that the lifetime risk of developing ovarian cancer is only 1% to 2% in the general population.

In a head-to-head trial, chromosomal microarray analysis was shown to be more effective than traditional karyotyping in prenatal diagnosis. Results of the study-which is the largest of its kind and which received support from the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development-reflect the accuracy, efficacy, and incremental yield of the technologies.

Researchers who prospectively examined the association between cigarette smoking/smoking cessation and the risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD) have found that even “light-to-moderate” smokers (those who smoke 1 to 14 cigarettes daily) are at increased risk. The study looked at 101,018 women participating in the Nurses' Health Study without known coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, and cancer beginning in 1980. (The Nurses' Health Study has collected biannual health questionnaires from US female nurses since 1976.)

Human papillomavirus (HPV) detection among older patients may be due to reactivation of the virus, not a new acquisition, according to new research. This fact, as well as the aging of the baby boomer generation-the first generation to have experienced the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s-means that perimenopausal women who are found to have HPV may have acquired it years before.

Doubling the duration of adjuvant tamoxifen treatment in women estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer reduces risk of late recurrence and death compared with the current standard-of-care of 5 years' therapy. So say the results of a large international randomized trial presented at the 2012 CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium and simultaneously published in The Lancet.

The New York Times claims that today, about 39% of doctors nationwide are independent, down from 57% in 2000, citing estimates by the consulting firm Accenture. The article "A Hospital War Reflects a Bind for Doctors in the U.S.," which appeared on the New York Times web site on November 30, 2012, discusses the state of healthcare in Boise, Idaho, which the authors call "a medical battleground" and claim is representative of the healthcare situation in many cities around the United States.

Researchers in the United Kingdom have found an increased prevalence of asthma among children born to parents who used assisted reproductive technologies (ART). A large registry-based study conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford and the University of Essex in England drew from the Millennium Cohort Study, a UK-wide, prospective study of 18,818 children recruited at age 9 months.