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Objective: This study aimed to quantitatively assess myocardial strain in preterm children aged 5 to 8 years of pregnancy complicated by severe preeclampsia (PE) by two-dimensional (2D) speckle tracking echocardiography.Method: A cohort study of 23 preterm children delivered by severe PE pregnant women from 2010 to 2012 in the First Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University was carried out. 23 preterm children from uneventful pregnancies in the same period served as controls. Myocardial functions including left ventricular longitudinal strain, radial strain, circumferential strain, and right ventricular longitudinal strain were evaluated by conventional Doppler, tissue Doppler imaging, and 2D speckle-tracking echocardiography (2D STE). All examinations were performed by an experienced ultrasonographer using the VIVID E9 (GE Healthcare) machine, according to standard techniques.Results: Children aged 5–8 years delivered from severe PE presented less weight (24.41 vs. 20.89 kg, P < 0.05), shorter height (124.1 vs 115.6 cm, P < 0.05) and faster heart rates (84 vs. 93 bpm, P < 0.05) compared to offspring of normotensive women. There were no significant differences in global left ventricular longitudinal strain, radial strain, circumferential strain, and right ventricular longitudinal strain between the children in the experimental group and the control group (P > 0.05).Conclusion: Exposure to the intrauterine environment of severe PE during the fetal period did not have a significant impact on cardiac structure in premature children at 5–8 years old, but they had a higher resting heart rate which may be associated with cardiovascular disease in the long run.

Background: Cesarean delivery after failure of trial of labor is associated with adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes. A prediction algorithm to identify women with high risk of an emergency cesarean could help reduce morbidity and mortality associated with labor. The objective of the present study was to derive and validate a simple model to predict cesarean delivery for low-risk nulliparous women in Chinese population.Methods: This retrospective study analyzed the low-risk nulliparous women with singleton cephalic full-term fetus delivered in two medical centers. After the clinical data of the women who delivered at the tertiary referral center (n=6 551) was collected and was used univariate and multivariable logistic regression analysis, the prediction model was fitted. We performed external validation using data from nulliparous who delivered from another hospital(secondary referral center, n=7 657). A new nomogram was established based on the development cohort to predict the cesarean. The ROC curve, calibration plot and decision curve analysis were used to assess the predictive performance. Results: The cesarean delivery rates in the development cohort and the external validation cohort were 8.79% (576/6 551) and 7.82% (599/7 657). Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that maternal age, height, BMI, weight gained during pregnancy, gestational age, induction method, meconium-stained amniotic fluid and neonatal sex were independent factors affecting cesarean outcome. Because sex of the fetuses were unknown until they born(China's Fertility Policy), we established two prediction models according to fetal sex was involved or not. The AUC was 0.782 and 0.774, respectively. The Hosmer-Lemeshow goodness-of-fit test showed that these two models fitted well. Decision curve analysis demonstrated that the models were clinically useful. And internal validation using Bootstrap method showed that these prediction models perform well. On the external validation set, the AUC were 0.775 and 0.775, respectively. The calibration plots for the probability of cesarean showed a good correlation. The online web server was constructed based on the nomogram for convenient clinical use.Conclusions: Both two models established by these factors have good prediction efficiency and high accuracy, which can provide the reference for clinicians to guide pregnant women to choose an appropriate delivery mode.