No abstract

Our study clearly demonstrates that left-handedness may be related to maternal smoking during pregnancy and a low Apgar score on birth.

AbstractAn episiotomy is a surgical incision through the perineum made to provide sufficient area for the delivery of the infant. About 10 to 95% of women who deliver will have episiotomy depending on which part of the world they are having delivery.Too early episiotomy causes extensive bleeding and too late episiotomy causes the excessive stretching of a pelvic floor and lacerations could not be prevented.According to widely accepted arguments, there are many benefits of episiotomy for the neonate: prevention of injuries, shoulder dystocia and mental retardation of the infant. Benefits for the mother are: reduction of severe lacerations, prevention of sexual dysfunction, prevention of urinary and fecal incontinence. But those things could also be complications of episiotomy, if it is being used nonrestrictively. Some other complications are also extensive bleeding, hematoma or infection.There are many different opinions in literature about using episiotomy restrictively or routinely, so it is the right doubt arisen: is it inevitable or unnecessary?There is a wide variation in episiotomy practice, and the decision of performing it or not depends of actual clinical situation.There is still a great need for continuous obstetrics education according to the evidence based guidelines for the patient’s safety.

To date, lateralization in living beings is a phenomenon almost mythologically unexplored. Scientists have proved that lateralization is not exclusively a human feature. Investigations in molecular biology, protein structure, mobility of bacteria, and intracellular lateralization in ciliates, shows important and universal nature of lateralization in living systems. Dominant lateralization implies the appearance of a dominant extremity, or a dominant sense during the performance of complex psychomotor activities. Hand dominance is usually defined as a tendency to use one hand rather than another to perform most activities and this is considered to be the most obvious example of cerebral lateralization and exclusive characteristic of humans. However, there are some exceptions in other species. The dominant hand is able to perform more complex and subtle manual tasks than the non-dominant hand, and this behavioral superiority is the absolute result of additional cerebral support. The asymmetry of brain organization was confirmed in rats, chimpanzees, dogs and birds, some fishes and lizards. The relationships between hand dominance with brain structure and function remain far from clear. For a long time, lateralization was considered unique to humans, but recently it has become clear that lateralization is a fundamental characteristic of the organization of brain and behavior in all vertebrates. It has been questioned to what extent lateralization in humans and other vertebrates may be comparable.

Hypertensive disorders in pregnancy are one of the leading causes of maternal death in the world and one of the major causes of perinatal mortality. The incidence of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy is 8%-15%. Significant changes of biochemical parameters in cases of hypertensive disorders in pregnancy are increased levels of blood glucose, urea, creatinine, uric acid (hyperuricemia), transaminases, and LDH. The most increased is the level of proteinuria. Bad laboratory results and the intensification of clinical signs, with multiorgan dysfunction, are indications for termination of pregnancy.