BACKGROUND Phthalates are multifunctional chemicals used in a variety of consumer, medical, and personal care products. Previously, we reported dose-response associations of decreased semen quality with urinary concentrations of monobutyl phthalate (MBP) and monobenzyl (MBzP) phthalate, which are metabolites of dibutyl phthalate and butylbenzyl phthalate, respectively. The present study extends...

Dental care in children with cardiac disease is an important consideration from the time the first tooth erupts because of the risk of infective endocarditis (IE). Transient bacteraemia occurs frequently during dental procedures with instrumentation or even after routine oral activities. Objectives: To investigate the oral health of paediatric cardiac patients and the parental knowledge about t...

Uterine contractions of more than 2 minutes' duration occurred spontaneously in 1.4% of 6,399 antenatal fetal heart rate (FHR) recordings. All recordings were made in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Tygerberg Hospital. The patients with spontaneous prolonged contractions (SPC) were compared with a randomly selected control group. Patients who had an SPC during antenatal FHR reco...

The first paediatric CI was done at the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles in 1980. Initial concerns about device infection from otitis media and electrode problems caused by head growth were soon proven to be essentially irrelevant. In 1988 the first cochlear implantation was done in South Africa at the University of Stellenbosch-Tygerberg Hospital Cochlear Implant Unit. Since then 260 childre...

INTRODUCTION Home tracheostomy care for children in South Africa dates back to 1989. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to describe the tracheostomy home programme at Tygerberg Children's Hospital (TCH), situated in a resource-limited setting in Cape Town, South Africa. DESIGN Retrospective descriptive study. SETTING Tracheostomy home programme at TCH. The primary care giver is trained by nurses....

Materials and methods Children were recruited from outpatient clinics within Tygerberg Children’s Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. Caregiver report of middle ear infections was obtained through a questionnaire. Bilateral otoscopy, tympanometry, then pure-tone testing was completed. Hearing loss was defined as a pure-tone average (PTA) of 500, 1000, 2000, and 4000 Hz of >15 decibels of heari...