Effect of attending childbirth education classes on psychological distress in pregnant women measured by means of the General Health Questionnaire.

Background: Pregnancy brings about many changes in a woman's life in somatic, psychological and social spheres. Therefore, many women decide to participate in childbirth education classes. The aim of study was to determine the differences in emotional distress between women who participated in childbirth education classes and these who did not.

Lipid index changes in the blood serum of patients with hyperplastic and early neoplastic lesions in the ovaries.

Background: The authors used the lipid index (WL) to monitor lipid changes before and after surgery. The surgical operation performed was the simultaneous enucleation of a cystic tumor of the hilum ovarii in its entirety (with diagnosis of a simple cyst or teratoma adultum) in groups of 20 patients.

Objectives: To compare the lipid index WL in the blood serum of patients undergoing surgery treatment at the following times: before and 7 days after surgery, and 6 and 12 months after surgery.

Inability to have children caused by recurrent HELLP syndrome in early pregnancies - implications for a review of literature.

This review is inspired by a case of two pregnancies of the same patient complicated by HELLP syndrome, which suggests that there is a predisposition for the occurrence of preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome in early pregnancy. HELLP syndrome, uncommon below the 20th week and rarer still in two consecutive pregnancies, appeared in two pregnancies of the same woman. The aim of our work is to try to understand the cause of heterogeneity of HELLP syndrome and help find a way of prolonging such pregnancies.

Initiation of preterm labor.

Preterm births are still a major problem in obstetrics. It is estimated that preterm births occur in about 12% of all pregnancies. Due to advances in medical technology and better care of fetuses and premature babies, the preterm mortality rate has been falling (as recently as 1995 the survival rate in the US for premature infants born at 34 weeks amounted to only a fraction of the corresponding rate for those born after 37 weeks).

Data dimensionality reduction in anthropometrical investigations.

Background: Very often it is necessary to make a decision or to establish a diagnosis on the basis of great amounts of different kinds of data. In this paper the principal component analysis procedure was applied to anthropometrical data analysis.

Objectives: The aim was to simplify the process of decision making by data dimensionality reduction.