Patients exposed to a surgical safety checklist experience better postoperative outcomes, but this could simply reflect wider quality of care in hospitals where checklist use is routine.

Major risk factors of peripartum transfusion in South Africa, namely, prenatal anemia and access to prenatal care, may be amenable to intervention. HIV infection and moderately low PLT count are novel risk factors that merit further investigation.

No abstract

The thyroid status of twenty-seven African patients with gestational trophoblastic neoplasia (GTN) was studied. Fifteen patients were found to be biochemically hyperthyroid (eight patients with choriocarcinoma; seven with hydatidiform mole). Of these fifteen patients, nine were clinically thyrotoxic. The most serious complication of thyrotoxicosis was life-threatening acute pulmonary oedema with associated cardiac failure. It was found that when serum levels of the human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) reached a level of about 0.1 X 10(6) iu/1, thirteen of sixteen patients were biochemically hyperthyroid; at serum levels of 0.3 X 10(6) iu/1 of hCG most patients were clinically thyrotoxic. A feature of hyperthyroidism associated with GTN is that whereas T4 is invariably raised the T3:T4 ratio tends to be low (0.015 +/- 005); rT3:T3 ratios were high in this group. TSH levels were not increased.

Summary.-Nuclear and cytoplasmic oestrogen receptors (REN and REc) were sought in 5 normal cervices and in 43 specimens of squamous carcinoma of the cervix. All 3 tissue components of the 5 normal cervices contained both REN and REc.Thirty-five (81 %) of the tumours contained receptors, but in only 9 (21 %) were they found in both subcellular compartments. Twenty-four tumours (56%) had only REc and 2 had only REN. The potential therapeutic significance of these findings is not yet known, but it seems possible that tumours with an intact receptor mechanism might benefit from oestrogen therapy and have a more favourable prognosis.