Isabelle Dehaene

Universitair Ziekenhuis Ghent · Department of Gynaecology

Administration of antenatal corticosteroids (ACS) for accelerating foetal lung maturation in threatened preterm birth is one of the cornerstones of prevention of neonatal mortality and morbidity. To identify the optimal timing of ACS administration, most studies have compared subgroups based on treatment-to-delivery intervals. Such subgroup analysi...

Objectives: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and its mitigation measures have been associated with changes in preterm birth (PTB) incidences. The objective of this paper is to summarize and comment on the literature on COVID-19 and PTB and to compare PTB incidence between 2019 (pre-COVID-19) and 2020 (COVID-19) in three Belgian tertiary care hospita...

PurposeTo critically analyse the literature on the antenatal corticosteroids (ACS)-to-birth interval from a causal point of view and to present a solution to the problem of bias caused by post hoc analysis.Methods Due to the post hoc nature of the ACS-to-birth interval, a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of ACS versus placebo is not able to examin...

Context.— Perinatal death is an increasingly important problem as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, but the mechanism of death has been unclear. Objective.— To evaluate the role of the placenta in causing stillbirth and neonatal death following maternal infection with COVID-19 and confirmed placental positivity for SARS-CoV-2. Design.— Case-based...

PurposeIn this correspondence, we highlight general and domain-specific caveats in the development and validation of prediction models. Methods Development and use of the “QUiPP” application, a tool for preterm birth prediction which is supported by the United Kingdom National Health Service, is scrutinised and commented on. ResultsWe highlight and...

Objective - To compare neonatal magnesemia in the first fifteen days of neonatal life between three groups: a control group not exposed to MgSO4, a neuroprotection group, and an eclampsia prevention group, and to explore its’ associations with child outcomes. Design - Retrospective single-centre cohort study. Setting - Tertiary care setting. Popula...

Differences in clinical practice regarding screening and treatment of infections associated with spontaneous preterm birth: an international survey. Dominique E. Werter, Isabelle Dehaene, Leo Gurney, Mireia Vargas Buján, Brenda M. Kazemier, from the International Spontaneous Preterm Birth Young Investigators (I-SPY) group Objective An association...

Background and aims Routine screening for Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) in pregnant women is common practice in many hospitals. However, little is known on its prevalence and clinical relevance in this population. In this prospective longitudinal study, we aimed to investigate the MRSA prevalence in our obstetric population, th...

A recently published study [1] proposed a machine learning classifier to detect preterm birth at an early stage of the pregnancy by making use of an envelope created from Fourier coefficients. The evaluation of this system within this study is, however, fundamentally flawed which resulted in overly optimistic near-perfect predictive performance mea...

From the start of the global COVID‐19 pandemic, a lot of attention has been focused on how SARS‐CoV‐2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2) impacts pregnancy. The current evidence suggests that pregnant women may be at an increased risk for more severe COVID‐19 disease and an increase in maternal death rate has been observed worldw...

Purpose - To critically analyse the literature on the antenatal corticosteroids (ACS)-to-birth interval from a causal point of view and to present a solution to the problem of bias caused by post-hoc analysis. Methods - Due to the post-hoc nature of the ACS-to-birth interval, a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of ACS versus placebo is not able to...

An accurate prognostic method for preterm birth (PTB) could avoid unnecessary treatment(s) with potentially negative effects. The objective was to explore the prognostic accuracy of commercially available bedside cervicovaginal biomarker tests in combination with cervical length (CL) compared to CL measurement alone and/or a biomarker test alone, f...

Information extracted from electrohysterography recordings could potentially prove to be an interesting additional source of information to estimate the risk on preterm birth. Recently, a large number of studies have reported near-perfect results to distinguish between recordings of patients that will deliver term or preterm using a public resource...

Background Uterine artery pseudo-aneurysms (UAP) mainly occur after traumatic delivery or traumatic pregnancy termination. A UAP can be either asymptomatic or present with symptoms such as vaginal bleeding, abdominal pain, hypovolemic shock, or fever when infected. We describe a patient diagnosed with a uterine artery pseudo-aneurysm in pregnancy t...

Objectives: COVID-19 predisposes patients to thrombotic disease. The aim of this guidance document is to provide Belgian health-care workers with recommendations on anticoagulation management in COVID-19 positive patients. Methods: These recommendations were based on current knowledge and a limited level of evidence. Results: We formulated rec...

PurposePreterm birth (PTB) can be categorised according to aetiology into: spontaneous preterm labour (SPL), preterm prelabour rupture of membranes (PPROM), and iatrogenic (iatro) PTB. Outcomes could differ between these groups, which could be of interest in counselling. We aimed to explore differences between aetiologic groups of PTB in maternal d...

This paper contributes to the pursuit of leveraging unstructured medical notes to structured clinical decision making. In particular, we present a pipeline for clinical information extraction from medical notes related to preterm birth, and discuss the main challenges as well as its potential for clinical practice. A large collection of medical not...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to compare short-term outcomes in children born between 24 and 34 weeks’ gestation, according to observed antenatal corticosteroids (ACS)-to-birth intervals. Research question: ‘Is there a difference in short-term outcomes between observed ACS-to-birth intervals across a range of gestational ages at birth?’...

Objectives Bone marrow oedema (BMO) on MRI of sacroiliac joints (SIJs) represents a hallmark of axial spondyloarthritis (SpA), yet such lesions may also occur under augmented mechanical stress in healthy subjects. We therefore sought to delineate the relationship between pregnancy/delivery and pelvic stress through a prospective study with repeated...

Information extracted from electrohysterography recordings could potentially prove to be an interesting additional source of information to estimate the risk on preterm birth. Recently, a large number of studies have reported near-perfect results to distinguish between recordings of patients that will deliver term or preterm using a public resource...

Background Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a sensitive method for detection of sacroiliitis. However, recently, concerns have been raised about its specificity. In contrast to radiographic spondyloarthritis (SpA), non-radiographic SpA has a more equal sex distribution. Hence, in young women with back pain a broad differential diagnosis has to b...

Preterm birth is the leading cause of death among young children and has a large prevalence globally. Machine learning models, based on features extracted from clinical sources such as electronic patient files, yield promising results. In this study, we review similar studies that constructed predictive models based on a publicly available dataset,...

Preterm birth is the leading cause of death among children under five years old. The pathophysiology and etiology of preterm labor are not yet fully understood. This causes a large number of unnecessary hospitalizations due to high–sensitivity clinical policies, which has a significant psychological and economic impact. In this study, we present a...

It is inherent to human logic that both doctors and patients want to suppress uterine contractions when a woman presents in threatened preterm labor. Tocolysis is widely applied in women with threatened preterm labor with a variety of drugs. According to literature, tocolysis is indicated to enable transfer to a tertiary center as well as to ensure...

Background Our aim was to evaluate the treatment effect of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) according to the Hyperglycemia and Adverse Pregnancy Outcome group (HAPO) screening. Results The prevalence of GDM, using HAPO 5 was 23.8%. Of these, 72.8% were treated. Comparison of outcomes between treated and untreated patients showed no differences....

Objective: To investigate the potential clinical use of serial fetal CPR measurements during the last month of pregnancy for the prediction of adverse perinatal outcome in unselected low-risk pregnancies. Methods: A multicenter prospective observational cohort study in 315 consecutively recruited low-risk pregnancies. All eligible pregnancies under...

We present a case of congenital ichthyosis because obstetrical literature is scarce and most obstetricians could need a reminder and update. Congenital ichthyosis (CI) comprises a variety of skin disorders characterised by abnormal keratinization of the epidermis, which are mostly transmitted in an autosomal recessive manner. This condition is rare...

Objective: A perinatal audit has the intention of quality of care improvement based on analysis of perinatal death, with our without analysis of maternal morbidity and/or mortality. Additional analysis of cases of intrapartum asphyxia could provide more insight into ways to improve quality of perinatal care. Methods: Analysis of cases of perinatal...

Puerperal group A streptococcus (GAS) infection, once the leading cause of postpartum sepsis, has been increasing again since the 1980s. Streptococcal toxic shock syndrome (STSS) is a serious complication characterized by rapidly spreading GAS infection, shock, and multiple organ failure. Immediate recognition and implementation of therapy is cruci...

Ziektegeschiedenis Patiënt A, een 17-jarig meisje dat aan het syndroom van Down lijdt komt samen met haar moeder op consultatie. Ze heeft last van over-vloedige en pijnlijke menses. Ze heeft een intelligentiequotiënt (IQ) van 40 en elke maand vormen de menses een probleem. Het gebruik van de contraceptieve pil is, gezien de dagelijkse inname, prakt...

Een primigravida zwanger van een monochoriale monoam-niotische (MCMA) tweeling, wordt doorverwezen naar onze MIC-afdeling op een amenorroeduur van 27 weken omwille van premature contracties. De cervixlengte is 15mm. MCMA tweelingen vertegenwoordigen 1% van de mo-nozygote tweelingen. De meest specifieke complicatie is een navelstrengverstrengeling,...