Saving Mothers' Lives: Reviewing maternal deaths to make motherhood safer: 2006-2008. The Eighth Report of the Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths in the United Kingdom.

In the triennium 2006-2008, 261 women in the UK died directly or indirectly related to pregnancy. The overall maternal mortality rate was 11.39 per 100,000 maternities.

Anticoagulant management of pregnancy following heart valve replacement in the United Kingdom, 1986-2002.

Background And Aim Of The Study: Patients with mechanical heart valves require anticoagulation which is associated with significant maternal mortality (1-4%) and fetal complications (31%) in pregnancy. The study aim was to identify anticoagulant protocols and outcomes for pregnant women undergoing heart valve replacement (HVR) in the United Kingdom.

Methods: Women aged between 18 and 45 years and registered with the United Kingdom Heart Valve Registry (UKHVR) each completed a questionnaire, and their obstetric notes were reviewed.

Maternal mortality in the developed world: lessons from the UK confidential enquiry.

The UK confidential maternal mortality enquiry shows that not only has maternal mortality decreased since 1952, the year of the first enquiry, but also the pattern of maternal mortality has changed markedly. Major surgical causes of death, such as post-partum haemorrhage and ruptured uterus, are no longer as important as medical causes such as heart disease. The 'Top Ten' recommendations in the current report for the years 2003-2005 emphasise the need for health care practitioners to be aware of the risks that medical conditions, both pre-existing and those arising de novo in pregnancy, impose on the expectant and newly delivered mother.

Obstretic medicine: interdisciplinary care for pregnancy and for women wishing to conceive.

The concept of 'obstetrical medicine' was established in the late 19th century, but overshadowed during most of the 20th century by dramatic improvements in surgical, anesthetic, antimicrobial therapeutics, and obstetrical methods and practice. During the last quarter of the 20th century the causes of maternal morbidity and mortality increasingly became pre-existing hereditable and acquired medical disorders and treatable or preventable medical complications of pregnancy. The role of obstetric medicine re-emerged because of surgical, therapeutic, and medical success.

Mid-trimester placentation assessment in high-risk pregnancies using maternal serum screening and uterine artery Doppler.

Objective: To determine the value of uterine artery velocimetry and mid-trimester maternal serum AFP/hCG measurements in predicting pregnancy complications in a high-risk group of pregnant patients.

Methods: Eighty-eight patients with chronic hypertension, previous preeclampsia, and thrombophilia were included. Maternal serum AFP/hCG was examined between 15-16 weeks gestation.

Association of raised titres of antibodies to Chlamydia pneumoniae with a history of pre-eclampsia.

Objective: To establish the prevalence of Chlamydia pneumoniae (C. pneumoniae) infection in a pregnant UK population and to investigate whether C. pneumoniae infection is more common in women with a previous history of pre-eclampsia.

Preeclampsia with abnormal liver function tests is associated with cholestasis in a subgroup of cases.

Objective: To investigate whether women with preeclampsia and abnormal liver function tests have raised serum bile acids.

Design: Measurement of serum bile acids in serum specimens collected at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford.

Setting: Imperial College School of Medicine.

Taurocholate induces changes in rat cardiomyocyte contraction and calcium dynamics.

Obstetric cholestasis is characterized by raised bile acids, and can be complicated by intrauterine death. We have shown that the bile acid taurocholate causes loss of synchronous beating, bradycardia and cessation of contraction in cultured rat cardiomyocytes [Williamson, Gorelik, Eaton, Lab, de Swiet and Korchev (2001) Clin. Sci.