Maternal and child health after assisted vaginal delivery: five-year follow up of a randomised controlled study comparing forceps and ventouse.

Objective: To undertake a five year follow up of a cohort of women and children delivered by forceps or vacuum extractor in a randomised controlled study.

Design: Follow up of a randomised controlled trial.

Setting: District general hospital in the West Midlands.

Indigenous health - a role for private general practice.

Background: The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander life expectancy gap is associated with lower primary care usage by Indigenous Australians. Many Indigenous Australians regard private general practitioners as their usual source of healthcare. However, a range of barriers results in relatively low access to primary care, with subsequent inadequate prevention and management of chronic disease.

WITHDRAWN: Soft versus rigid vacuum extractor cups for assisted vaginal delivery.

Background: The original cups used for vacuum extraction delivery of the fetus were rigid metal cups. Subsequently, soft cups of flexible materials such as silicone rubber or plastic were introduced. Soft cups are thought to have a poorer success rate than metal cups.

WITHDRAWN: Vacuum extraction versus forceps for assisted vaginal delivery.

Background: Proponents of vacuum delivery argue that it should be chosen first for assisted vaginal delivery, because it is less likely to injure the mother.

Objectives: The objective of this review was to assess the effects of vacuum extraction compared to forceps, on failure to achieve delivery and maternal and neonatal morbidity.

Search Strategy: We searched the Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group trials register.

Brain phosphoinositide extraction, fractionation, and analysis by MALDI-TOF MS.

Matrix-assisted laser desorption and ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry (MS) can provide rapid, sensitive determinations of lipids from small tissue samples in both single determinations and automated high-throughput assays. MALDI-TOF MS is a sensitive, high-throughput technique for the determination of lipids such as the phosphoinositides, PtdIns (phosphatidylinositol), PIP (phosphatidylinositol-4-phosphate, and PIP2 (phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate), but in crude extracts the signals are weak or not observed due in large part to ion suppression by phosphatidylcholine and other cationic lipids. A rapid separation step using a small column of a strong cation exchange (SCX) gel can be utilized easily and effectively to adsorb or capture cationic lipids from chloroform/methanol lipid extracts and provide substantially improved signals for the phosphoinositides.