Female sex is a risk factor for mortality after aortic valve replacement, for major vascular complications after TAVI, and for transfusions after both approaches.

The presence of parents and other family members in European NICUs has improved over a 10-year period. Several barriers, however, are still in place, particularly in the South European countries.

As part of a collaborative project on the epidemiology of craniofacial anomalies, funded by the National Institutes for Dental and Craniofacial Research and channeled through the Human Genetics Programme of the World Health Organization, the International Perinatal Database of Typical Orofacial Clefts (IPDTOC) was established in 2003. IPDTOC is collecting case-by-case information on cleft lip with or without cleft palate and on cleft palate alone from birth defects registries contributing to at least one of three collaborative organizations: European Surveillance Systems of Congenital Anomalies (EUROCAT) in Europe, National Birth Defects Prevention Network (NBDPN) in the United States, and International Clearinghouse for Birth Defects Surveillance and Research (ICBDSR) worldwide. Analysis of the collected information is performed centrally at the ICBDSR Centre in Rome, Italy, to maximize the comparability of results. The present paper, the first of a series, reports data on the prevalence of cleft lip with or without cleft palate from 54 registries in 30 countries over at least 1 complete year during the period 2000 to 2005. Thus, the denominator comprises more than 7.5 million births. A total of 7704 cases of cleft lip with or without cleft palate (7141 livebirths, 237 stillbirths, 301 terminations of pregnancy, and 25 with pregnancy outcome unknown) were available. The overall prevalence of cleft lip with or without cleft palate was 9.92 per 10,000. The prevalence of cleft lip was 3.28 per 10,000, and that of cleft lip and palate was 6.64 per 10,000. There were 5918 cases (76.8%) that were isolated, 1224 (15.9%) had malformations in other systems, and 562 (7.3%) occurred as part of recognized syndromes. Cases with greater dysmorphological severity of cleft lip with or without cleft palate were more likely to include malformations of other systems.

Introduction The study was implemented to provide guidance to decision makers and clinicians by describing hospital care offered to women who gave birth with confirmed COVID 19 infection. Materials and methods National population based prospective cohort study involving all women with confirmed COVID 19 who gave birth between February 25 and April 22, 2020 in any Italian hospital. Results The incidence rate of confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection in women who gave birth was 2.1 per 1000 maternities at a national level and 6.9/1000 in the Lombardy Region. Overall one third of the women developed a pneumonia and 49.7% assumed at least one drug. Caesarean section rate was 32.9%, no mothers nor newborns died. Six percent of the infants tested positive for SARS CoV 2 at birth. Conclusions Clinical features and outcomes of COVID 19 in women who gave birth are similar to those described for the general population, most women developing mild to moderate illness.

The data do not suggest large differences in total prevalence of HPE among the studied populations that would be useful to generate etiological hypotheses.