Premature birth
Pregnancy
is certainly a hot widely explored issue in the www realm. Premature
birth, as an important subtopic owing to its implications for maternal
and newborn health, is treated in almost every pregnancy related
website.
In terms of educational and
research materials, a good and comprehensive stop is the website of the
Geneva Foundation for Medical Education and Research at
www.gfmer.ch/Guidelines/Obstetrics_gynecology_guidelines.php.
This is an official body and its website is an authoritative source. In
the list of topics there are some related to premature birth, such as
preterm labour, preterm rupture of membranes, and group B streptococcal
infections in pregnancy. Each topic contains a list of management and
prevention guidelines, standards, and statements, published by
authorities in various countries. It also includes Cochrane reviews
that are related to each topic, as well as relevant articles from
journals and professional
websites.
Another excellent resource
is the university library of the Karolinska Institute, at
www.mic.ki.se/Diseases/C13.html. At first glance, this website
looks practical, as it keeps all topics and corresponding links to the
same page. For example, to find the links pertaining to the topic
"pregnancy complications", you need to guide yourself
through the contents index at the top, which is in alphabetical order.
Your search can then get confusing, however, because these links are
not in alphabetical order. This makes your search a
time-consuming process, as it forces you to go through every one
out of the dozens of links to find what you're looking
for.
Of all the links, we would
highlight the one dedicated to new parents of premature
babies.
If you want to learn about
the information available to your patients on the world wide web, two
good places to go are the Mayo Clinic resource and the Discovery Health
website. These websites are both patient oriented, but they wrap up the
information differently. The Mayo Clinic link is more medical
professional view in terms of appearance and organisation of
information. There are links to other Mayo Clinic resources for
patients to explore pregnancy and childbirth. The Discovery Channel
link offers a more journalistic and colourfully attractive display. The
link takes you to a list of subchapters related to complications of
pregnancy; by scrolling down this list, information on prematurity can
be found in the "Premature labour" and "Problems with
the baby" subchapters. The other subchapters are equally useful
to browse, and the “Helpful tools” one includes a set of
visual tools from videos and interactive slides to pictures with text
explanations.
BSIP ASTIER/SPL
Premature birth is a relevant issue in the developing
world. This year, World Health Day was dedicated to Mother and Child
Health. The Institute of Child Health in London
(www.ich.ucl.ac.uk/library/international.htm) has a sound,
albeit non- comprehensive collection of general resources about
international health and development, including specific sections on
mother and child health, as well as reproductive and sexual health.
It's never too late to start to think
global.
Tiago Villanueva, final year medical student, University of Lisbon, Portugal
Irina Haivas, fifth year medical student, University of Freiburg, Germany
Email: ihaivas@yahoo.com
studentBMJ 2005;13:221-264 June ISSN 0966-6494
