Dr. Grabovac presented a poster presentation at the 4th Annual Canadian National Perinatal Research Meeting (CNPRM) of work done with Feng YY, Jarde A, Seo Y, Grabovac M, Powell A, Nwebube M, McDonald SD, “How often are progesterone, pessary and cerclage being used for prevention of preterm birth in primary, secondary and tertiary Canadian centres?”, which found that approximately 1 in 4 women at risk of preterm birth from a previous preterm birth or short cervix were offered prevention, while 1 in 6 was offered progesterone.  The conference was held in Montebello, QC February 14-17 2017.

Dr. Grabovac presented a plenary oral on “What is the safest mode of delivery for extremely preterm breech infants: a systematic review and meta-analyses?”, work she completed with Dr. Jehan Karim, a PGY-3 in our department who did a research elective with Dr. McDonald. Importantly, she and Dr. Karim found that Cesarean section is associated with an approximate 40% reduction in the odds of death and severe intraventricular hemorrhage in actively resuscitated breech singleton infants before 28 weeks.

Dr. Grabovac also presented an oral presentation of an interprovincial comparison of recent data, work done in conjunction with the provincial perinatal research programs through S Dzakpasu, N Chapinal, M Guo, C Woolcott, P Murphy and Dr. McDonald which found, increasing proportions of women from west to east begin pregnancy with excess weight or gain too much weight during pregnancy. Excess GWG was a larger contributor to LGA than either overweight or obese BMI. Similarly, the contribution of inadequate GWG to SGA exceeded that of underweight BMI.

Dr. McDonald was excited to be part of a CIHR grant from which came research entitled “Caesarean section and health care utilization in the offspring”. Alexander Nikolas MacLellan, Christy G. Woolcott, Linda Dodds, Bryan Maguire, Sarah McDonald, Stefan Kuhle. 4th Annual Canadian National Perinatal Research Meeting (CNPRM), Montebello, QC   February 14-17 2017.

What a fruitful week!