O alcance do nosso escopo

Abstract

Within the wide range of interests of its readers and authors, the Revista Brasileira de Saúde Materno Infantil is publishing in this issue, various articles on issues that aptly demonstrate the extent to which our aims and mission have been fulfilled. First of all, it should be pointed out that, since our scope is broad, we are able to cover not only the topics included here but many others that fit perfectly within our field of interest. In fact, according to our "Instructions to Authors" the journal aims "to publish scientific articles in the field of mother child health, addressing various topics relating to maternal health, women's health and child health, from a biome-dical, socio-cultural and epidemiological point of the view". This scope is so vast that it is unlikely any one issue of the journal will cover the whole range. We therefore feel satisfied, as editors, with the efforts we make, given the nature and variety of the subjects presented, to meet the needs of various fields of investigation into women's and mother and child health.In fact we study three specific fields within the broader area, biology, clinical biology and epidemiology. The first includes the article on the microscopic study of hydatidiform mole with edema and on the birth weight of children born to adolescents and young adults in the Northeast of Brazil, and also the case study of ectopia cordis. Studies with a clinical focus include those dealing with musculo-skeletal pain, maternal breastfeeding and eating habits in early infancy, and doctor-patient communication in the perception of women with a mammary nodule. Finally, there are epidemiological articles on the completion of child health records in the semiarid region of Brazil and abortion care in the Brazilian National Health System in the Northeast.Thus, even with this limited sample of the scope of our journal, we believe we are contributing effectively to the spread of information regarding subjects of interest to the scientific community in the field of mother and child health.We would like to draw attention to the fact that the studies published here come not only from Brazil, but from other countries (in Europe, Africa and Latin America). One of the latter is the aforementioned article in the field of biology on the microscopic study of the tissue structure of a hydatidiform mole; the other, a clinical study from Portugal, reports a case of ectopia cordis, a rare congenital malformation, with an incidence of 5-8 cases per million among newborns, confirming the anatomo-pathological findings using ultrasound. A third article deals with maternal breastfeeding in São Tomé e Príncipe. Although it deals with an everyday aspect of child nutrition, its importance derives from the fact that it "raises questions regarding child nutrition and public health in that country, showing early diversification of nutrition in infancy, an issue that needs to be addressed as it has been in other parts of the world.These various approaches to research in the fields of biology and mother and ...