Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Effects of Pregnancy on the Brain


Dr. Chad Hill has been the physician and owner of Siloam Springs Women's Center in Arkansas since 2012. Through his practice, Dr. Chad Hill provides prenatal care to women with both routine and high-risk pregnancies and delivers their babies.

A study published in Nature Neuroscience in February 2016 suggests that pregnancy changes the size and structures of the part of the brain that is sensitive to the feelings of others. Furthermore, these changes persist for a couple of years after the birth of the child. Testing also revealed that mothers who demonstrated the most significant changes to the brain experienced the greatest emotional attachment to their babies.

The test involved a brain scan for study participants before they had ever been pregnant, and then another one after they had their first child. The scans revealed that the women lost gray matter in brain areas associated with social cognition. The results may suggest that the reduction in gray matter is due to a streamlining of the area to increase motherly instinct.

Thursday, February 2, 2017

CME at the 2017 ACOG Annual Clinical and Scientific Meeting


Dr. Chad Hill is a physician based in Fayetteville, Arkansas, and the owner of Siloam Springs Women’s Center, a facility that has specialized in women’s health care since 1998. In addition to running his practice and working as Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology (OB/GYN) at Siloam Springs Regional Hospital, Dr. Chad Hill is a fellow of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

A companion to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the Congress was established in 2010 and is made up of board-certified OB/GYNs. In May of 2017, the ACOG will present its Annual Clinical and Scientific Meeting in San Diego. The theme of the meeting is the “Next Generation of Health Care.”

Each day of the four-day event will focus on a different area of women’s health care, contraception and family planning, surgery, sexuality and menopause, and genetics, and offer seminars, networking “conversations,” tutorials, and continued medical education (CME) courses.

The final day consists of a variety of courses centered around either obstetrics or gynecology. In the morning, attendees can choose one three-hour course on infertility, diagnosis and management, or critical care medicine, followed by a second three-hour course in cervical length education, complications in gynecologic surgery, or colposcopy.

Alternatively, physicians may select one six-hour course. Many options are available, including obstetric ultrasound, operative and office hysteroscopy, and high risk pregnancy.