ABSTRACT
The nature and purpose of antenatal classes are reviewed briefly, together with the common assumption that women given antenatal training to cope with their labour pains do all in fact make use of the breathing and postural techniques which have been taught in the classes when they come to labour itself. This assumption was tested by obtaining reports of the use of such techniques from sixty primiparous mothers after their labours. The results showed that the majority of these women did use their coping techniques at the onset of contractions, but as labour progressed toward delivery fewer and fewer mothers did so, less than a third practising any kind of coping techniques by the time they were in the second stage of labour. Of the more than two thirds remaining, a very substantial number could be accounted for by the mothers who had epidural analgesia, but, even allowing for this, more than half of the 'non-epidural' mothers failed to make use of their postural and breathing techniques during the second stage of labour. These findings suggest that it should no longer be assumed that all women taught to cope with labour pains by learning postural and breathing techniques in antenatal classes will necessarily be able to use them throughout labour itself.
Subject(s)
Labor, Obstetric , Mothers/education , Pain/psychology , Prenatal Care/psychology , Adaptation, Psychological , Adult , Female , Humans , PregnancyABSTRACT
This study was designed to determine whether immunohistochemical stains for tumour-associated markers may be useful in the detection and differential diagnosis of premalignant and malignant lesions of the cervix. The expression of four markers detected by monoclonal antibodies, human milk fat globule 1 and 2 (HMFG-1 and 2), Ca1 and anti-carcinoembryonic antigen (anti-CEA) on conventional histological sections of various cervical lesions has been investigated. None of these markers was specific for neoplastic lesions of the cervix and all four markers were expressed by metaplastic as well as neoplastic cells, and it was concluded that their application in the histopathological examination of the cervix is limited.
