[Women's health and development].

Compared to industrialized countries, the maternal mortality rate is 100 times higher in resource-poor countries, where every minute a woman dies because she is pregnant. Most of these deaths are due to hemorrhage during home delivery. This high fatality rate results mainly from a lack of obstetric professionals, remoteness, and poverty all of which hinder timely access to emergency obstetric care.

Rights to safe motherhood and newborn health: ethical issues.

Worldwide, one woman dies every minute as a result of being pregnant. This statistic highlights the denial of women's rights to safe motherhood in many parts of the world, particularly in low-resource countries where 98% all maternal deaths occur. The majority of pregnant women die because they deliver unattended by a properly trained birth professional.

Vaginal delivery using cranioclasia following prenatal diagnosis of a giant fetal intracranial teratoma.

Intracranial teratoma, although a rare disease, is nonetheless the most common of the congenital tumors of the central nervous system in the neonatal period. It can be diagnosed antenatally by ultrasound. The prognosis for fetal forms of teratoma is very grim.

Successful pregnancy with the use of nitric oxide donors and heparin after recurrent severe preeclampsia in a woman with scleroderma.

We report the case of a woman with scleroderma who had severe, early-onset preeclampsia on 2 consecutive pregnancies. With a treatment that included aspirin, heparin, and a nitric oxide donor, her third pregnancy ended with a healthy neonate at term. Nitric oxide donors and heparin may play a preventive role on placental dysfunction in scleroderma.

[Prenatal diagnosis: uncertainties and perspectives].

The practice of faetal medicine has been regulated by law as of July 29th 1994, licensing Multidisciplinary Centres for Prenatal Diagnosis. With time passing by, echography has become more and more accurate, genetics and molecular biology further developed, prenatal diagnosis increasingly precocious and intrusive. Indications for medical interruption of pregnancy are easy to decide for obvious malformations.

Long-term survival with consolidation intraperitoneal chemotherapy for patients with advanced ovarian cancer with pathological complete remission.

Objectives: The goal of this study was to evaluate the long-term outcome after consolidation intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy in patients with a negative second-look laparotomy (SLL) following first-line intravenous chemotherapy for advanced ovarian cancer.

Methods: This study included patients with FIGO stage III-IV ovarian cancer who entered into four prospective trials (1984-1995) including intravenous chemotherapy based on cisplatin (six cycles) and anthracycline, early debulking surgery after three cycles of chemotherapy in the case of initial residual disease >2 cm, SLL, and IP consolidation chemotherapy. Among 218 patients, 68 with biopsy-negative SLL received every 4 weeks three consolidation cycles of IP chemotherapy (mitoxantrone, cisplatin, etoposide) via a totally implantable port.

Operable Stages IB and II cervical carcinomas: a retrospective study comparing preoperative uterovaginal brachytherapy and postoperative radiotherapy.

Purpose: To evaluate our data concerning prognostic factors and treatment toxicity in a series of operable cervical carcinomas.

Methods And Materials: Between May 1972 and January 1994, 414 patients with cervical carcinoma, staged according to the 1995 FIGO staging system (286 Stage IB1, 38 Stage IB2, 56 Stage IIA, and 34 Stage IIB with 1/3 proximal parametrial involvement), underwent radical hysterectomy with (n = 380) or without (n = 34) bilateral pelvic lymph node dissection (N+: n = 68). Group I included 168 patients who received postoperative radiation therapy (RT): 64 patients had low-dose-rate vaginal brachytherapy with a median total dose (MTD) of 50 Gy; 93 patients had external beam pelvic RT (EBPRT) with an MTD of 45 Gy over 5 weeks, followed by low-dose-rate vaginal brachytherapy (MTD: 20 Gy); and 11 patients had EBPRT alone (MTD: 50 Gy over 6 weeks).

Low Vitamin B(12) level as a risk factor for very early recurrent abortion.

Objective: To examine the relationship between Vitamin B(12) deficiency and early recurrent abortion (ERA) or very early recurrent abortion (VERA) abortion around 5 weeks of amenorrhea.

Study Design: Serum B(12), folate and homocysteine levels were carried out in 110 consecutive women with unexplained ERA or VERA and in 96 women with one or more children and no abortion history.

Results: Ten women were found to have low serum B(12) levels versus one in the control group.