[Pregnancy in women with spinal cord injuries: State of knowledge]. / Grossesse chez les femmes blessées médullaires : état des connaissances.

OBJECTIVES: Updating knowledge of health professionals about pregnant women with spinal cord injuries. Development of maternity hospitals to make them accessible to spinal cord injured pregnant women to improve their care in pre-, per- and post-partum. METHODS: Cross-sectional declarative study based on a questionnaire distributed to health professionals in the maternity hospital of the University Hospital of Nantes and liberal midwives of Nantes conurbation, based on their knowledge, their difficulties and their expectations for obstetrical care for spinal cord injured women. An inventory was carried out in parallel at the maternity hospital of the University Hospital of Nantes. RESULTS: Seventy-two percent of health professionals surveyed rated their level of knowledge on spinal cord injuries insufficient or even non-existent. Among the professionals, 84.8% said they encountered difficulties to take care of spinal cord injured women. The main cited difficulty relates to unsuitable equipment or premises, obstacle indeed found during the inventory made on the maternity hospital. CONCLUSION: Several proposals are being considered, including specific trainings, the execution of a management protocol for spinal cord injured women, the establishment of a situation's form of handicap, the layout of the maternity hospitals premises, and finally, the creation of reference's centers in the region to optimize the follow-up of these patients.

Reconstruction of a scalar-tensor theory of gravity in an accelerating universe

The present acceleration of the Universe strongly indicated by recent observational data can be modeled in the scope of a scalar-tensor theory of gravity. We show that it is possible to determine the structure of this theory along with the present density of dustlike matter from two observable cosmological functions: the luminosity distance and the linear density perturbation in the dustlike matter component as functions of redshift. Explicit results are presented in the first order in the small inverse Brans-Dicke parameter omega(-1).