- Overview
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I am interested in exploring whether certain functional placental structures and their location and timing of development are factors in normal pregnancy outcome. Conversely, I am also interested in identifying specific placental development factors that are associated with poor pregnancy outcomes or long term health problems.
- Research
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Current project
Ongoing collaborative work with colleagues at the University of Ottawa is aimed at developing standardized “synoptic” templates for placental pathology reporting.Current Project
Ongoing collaborative work is aimed at defining objective tests or measurements to distinguish constitutionally small from growth restricted fetuses. This work is being done as part of a multidisciplinary and multi-institutional study including the maternal-fetal medicine and pathology divisions at BC Children's and Women's Hospital and The Ottawa Hospital. This study seeks to correlate results of rests that are done in pregnancy including ultrasounds and Doppler as well as novel testing for proteins in the maternal serum (angiogenic growth factors) with placental pathology.
Study reveals that sucrose may not reduce the impact of neonatal pain exposure on long-term outcomes
Infants born two to four months early are exposed to mildly painful procedures in the NICU that are essential to monitor their health. As research shows that exposure to daily pain is associated with poorer behavioural and cognitive outcomes later in life, a common pain management strategy is to give those babies sucrose, but a BCCHR study shows evidence that a sugar solution doesn’t reduce these negative effects of pain exposure in the long term.
