Women using addictive substances during pregnancy: the effects of substance abuse on the prenatal and postnatal development of child Blanka Nechanská Abstract Background: Substance abuse among pregnant women represents a public health issue internationally, associated with high costs to the society and at the personal level for the women and children involved. Aims: The aim of the study was to determine the basic socioeconomic characteristics of women with substance use disorder during pregnancy and selected characteristics neonatal outcomes their children. Another goal was to study the morbidity in children prenatally exposed to addictive substances by studying hospitalizations up to three years of age. Material and methods: Series of analysis within database-linkage study combining data on pregnancy and neonatal outcomes with data from in-patient treatment in CR in 2000-2014 was performed. The sample consisted of pregnant women diagnosed with substance use disorder during pregnancy and women from general population, and their children. Neonatal outcomes were gestational age, birth weight and length, preterm birth, and intrauterine growth restriction (Small-for-Gestational-Age, SGA). Information on the number of hospita- lizations, treatment time and diagnostic groups according to ICD-10 were outcomes of...

1 ABSTRACT The issue of births outside a medical facility is currently a controversial topic between specialists as well as in the public sector. While the specialists concur in refusing home births, the society is divided. There are voices that refuse home births but there are also plenty of people who support the right of mothers to give birth outside of a medical facility. Very sensitive topic is the legal and ethical aspects of the protection of unborn children and the issue of a safely conducted delivery. In the last decades, the life value of an unborn child has been seen as an ethical problem. The right to life is one of the fundamental human rights, which is enshrined in the constitutional system of the Czech Republic and also in the international human rights conventions. Because there are different opinions regarding this issue, it is necessary to establish a view that is widely accepted so that legal standards can be approved provided that the opinions of minorities are being respected. The main objective of this presented dissertation was to ascertain why are people losing confidence in a doctor's role during delivery and what is the reason for some of the mothers being unsatisfied with current institutional system of obstetrics. On the basis of these factual findings, which emerged during the...