American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, May 16-18

The annual meeting of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) was held from May 16 to 18 in Minneapolis and was attended by more than 4,000 clinicians, academicians, allied health professionals, and others interested in obstetrics and gynecology. The conference highlighted recent advances in the prevention, detection, and treatment of conditions impacting women, with presentations focusing on the advancement of health care services for women worldwide.

In one study, Temiloluwa O. Oladeji, of the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, and colleagues identified racial and socioeconomic disparities regarding the initiation of prenatal care for individuals early in pregnancy after presenting to the emergency department.

The authors evaluated data on pregnant women who presented to the emergency department in an Ohio hospital during 2019, prior to establishing prenatal care. The researchers found that pregnant women on public insurance or who were uninsured were more likely to initiate prenatal care after the ACOG recommendation of “prior to 12 weeks of gestation.” Minorities, including Black, Hispanic, and multiracial pregnant women, were also more likely to initiate prenatal care after the recommended 12 weeks.

“There are evident racial and socioeconomic disparities in initiation of prenatal care after presenting to the emergency department for people early in pregnancy, and interventions should be created to create a path of pregnant people to initiate prenatal care after visiting the emergency department to help mitigate this,” Oladeji said. “By designing targeted interventions, like initiating prenatal care after emergency department visits, some of the terrible disparities in the United States, like infant and maternal mortality rates, may be remedied.”

Abstract ID 1050

In a retrospective study, Amani R. Patterson, a medical student at the University of Texas Medical Branch John Sealy School of Medicine in Galveston, and colleagues found that women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) have an increased risk for endometrial cancer compared to women without PCOS.

Using the TriNetX database of deidentified medical records, the authors stratified women with and without PCOS by age to assess the effect of PCOS on endometrial, breast, and ovarian cancer risks.

The researchers found that women of reproductive age/premenopausal with PCOS had a decreased risk for endometrial, ovarian, and breast cancer compared with women of post-reproductive age/perimenopausal/postmenopausal with PCOS. Compared with those without PCOS, women with PCOS were found to have an increased risk for endometrial cancer and a decreased risk for breast cancer. There was no significant difference seen in ovarian cancer risk between women with and without PCOS.