Determinants of unintended pregnancy and its impact on the health of women in some governorates of Upper Egypt

Worldwide, more than half of all unintended pregnancies end in abortion, indicating the preference for increasingly smaller families. The present work aimed to assess the determinants of unintended pregnancy and its impact on women's health in El Fayoum and Benisuef governorates. A community-based cross-sectional household survey was conducted among 827 married women of reproductive age. The study was conducted in two governorates, El Fayoum and Benisuef, for a period of 6 months. The current study revealed that 15.9% of women who participated in the study had an unmet need for family planning, with subsequent unintended pregnancy. Higher age of women and her age at the time of marriage, illiteracy, short interpregnancy spacing, exceeding the desired number of children, negative attitude of husbands toward the use of family planning methods, and absence of discussion between partners on the use of means to postpone pregnancy increased the number of unintended pregnancies. Also, women with unintended pregnancy were at a higher risk of experiencing health problems during her pregnancy. Despite the efforts taken by family planners, the problem of unintended pregnancy continues to increase in Egypt, with its adverse effect on pregnancy and maternal outcomes. Therefore, the strategy for maternal mortality reduction in Egypt should focus on addressing the unmet needs of high-parity, uneducated, nonworking women

Prognostic and predictive factors of breast cancer among Egyptian women

To assess the prognostic as well as the predictive factors among the female Egyptian breast cancer patients to evaluate how much they affect the outcome; being free or had local recurrence or distant metastasis on follow up. From January 1998 to December 2003, 3985 Egyptian women having breast cancer, with their prognostic factors which were: age, nodal status and number of affected lymph nodes, tumor size, tumor grade, hormone receptor status, surgical therapy that patients underwent [Modified radical mastectomy versus conservative breast surgery], and whether they received hormonal therapy or not. All data were analyzed retrospectively to detect the 5-year survival rate, using the patients' data sheets and pathology reports that were included. Furthermore, for confirmation the slides were reexamined for the histopathological diagnosis as well as studying their hormonal receptors immunohistochemically. Uni-variant analysis showed that, age 4 affected lymph nodes had more than double fold incidence of having recurrence within the 5- year follow up [RR 2.1; 95% CI; 1.13- 3.99]. Tumor size of more than 2cm increases the risk of recurrence by 18.8 [95%CI; 2.19-161.9]. number of lymph node metastasis, age less than 35 years and tumor size were the most significant prognostic factors affecting the breast cancer behavior among female Egyptian breast cancer patients