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In his novel Les Larmes (2016), Quignard delves into the origins of his art by invoking the Oaths of Strasbourg, as recorded in Nithard's 9th-century chronicle, and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia, considered the birth certificates of the French language and literature, respectively. Within a narrative that blends history and fiction, where names mirror the transition from Latin to Old French and the latter's intersections with Old German, the onomastic anagram formed by Nithard's own name and Hartnid, the name of his brother, whom he barely mentions, appears not only to encapsulate recurring themes in the novel and unveil various aspects of Quignard's poetics but also to encode the author's signature within the text through his writing itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the Italian law on medically assisted procreation (Law n. 40 of 2004) and particularly the prohibition of surrogacy under Article 12. This procedure is in fact prohibited in Italy's legal system; anyway, there have been cases in which many couples (heterosexual and homosexual) went to the States where this practice is allowed to access the procedure, in violation of the limitation of international public order. In this context, there is the problem of the legal recognition of the foreign birth certificate. However, the issue of surrogacy raises a series of problems relating to the legal qualification of the interested parties, also in consideration of the necessity to respect the relationship of parent with the child. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author studies the ways in which immigrants coming from the mountains of Carnia - mainly weavers, tailors and shoemakers - settled in the peninsula of Istria during the 18th century. He locates the type of relationships they created with the local people, and the systems of transmission of heredity. More particularly, the inquiry is based on a systematic analysis of notarial archives from Friuli, on the notary protocols from Grisignana (Grožnjan) and on the parish birth registers kept in the State Archive of Pazin (Pisino). The confrontation between these documents with documents of other types and coming from different archives (held in Trieste, Udine and Venice), allowed the study of small-scale lending, the different forms of capital accumulation, as well as processes of social and economic advancement of some families. Finally, the study explains how, in just a few generations, the people from Friuli were able to create a tight network of patronage relationships and spiritual kinship with the locals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: birth cohorts are a necessary tool for the study of the effects of exposures which can occur during pregnancy and early life on the development and health status in paediatric and adult life. The Italian Medical Birth Register (CeDAP), linked with other health administrative data, allows to build population based births cohorts to be followed over time., Objectives: to sistematically review all published scientific papers using data extracted from the (CeDAP) in order to give a picture of their current use for epidemiological aims; to describe advantages and limits of these data and possible future developments for epidemiological purposes., Methods: a systematic review was conducted using PubMed, identifying all peer-reviewed research papers in English or Italian published by November 2015, by combining of free text and MeSH terms, where available. Features of included papers have been double checked and possible disagreements have been discussed to reach consensus., Results: the research strategy found 720 papers, 35 of which fulfilling the required criteria. Only few Italian regions used CeDAP data for epidemiological studies, particularly Lazio and Umbria (Central Italy) and Emilia-Romagna and Friuli Venezia Giulia (Northern Italy). About half of the included papers were analytical, while the others were descriptive. Occurrence of caesarean deliveries and the prevalence of malformations were the most recurrent topics. Almost all papers used only data at delivery, whereas 5 papers used a longitudinal design with follow-up after birth., Conclusions: the Italian CeDAP registry is an important source of information for epidemiological research and its use for both aetiological aims and health services assessment should be enhanced. Furthermore, its characteristics, in particular its homogeneity among all Italian regions, might allow to create a multiregional birth cohort to be regularly followed up.

Objectives: to evaluate and validate the use of an algorithm designed to identify in hospital discharge records (SDO) cases with congenital malformations (MC) at birth and/or reported in hospitalizations within the first year of life using as gold standard the Congenital malformation Registry of the Local Health Unit of Mantova, Northern Italy, (RMC-MN), which controls all the medical records of infants born to mothers living in the province., Design: an algorithm designed for the identification of malformed cases in the SDO database using two modules, one for identification of cases potentially malformed and one for their validation was used. A comparison of the results with those observed by the RMC-MN was then conducted., Setting and Participants: data of the SDO and the RMC-MN for the period 2010-2011 relative to those detected in newborns within the first year of life in the resident population in the province., Results: of 8,042 infants born to mothers residing in the province of Mantova, 7,367 were excluded by the algorithm as malformed with the exception of only one false negative (negative predictive value - NPV: 99.99%); in the remaining 675 cases (8.4%) there was at least one code of congenital malformation. The algorithm has also included 396 cases (4.9%) with isolated minor malformations or diseases considered not malformations, of which 23 were false negatives (NPV: 94.2%). In the remaining 279 cases potentially malformed the algorithm considered as validated 169 cases (60.6%), including 11 false positives (positive predictive value - PPV: 93.5%). In the remaining 110 cases to evaluate, 46 were true positives (PPV: 41.8%)., Conclusions: the proposed instrument has identified correctly SDO in 89.4% of cases registered by the RMC-MN to produce a small number of false positives among the validated cases (6.5%) and effectively exclude inappropriate cases (94.2%). The authors suggest a judicious use of the instrument, which should be led by experts of SDO, clinical and epidemiology of congenital malformations.

Objectives: implementation and validation of a methodology to link and integrate hospital discharge record (SDO), birth certificate (CeDAP) and the population-based registry of congenital malformations of the Emilia-Romagna Region (IMER). An algorithm has been developed to link registry data and administrative data through the use of indirect patient identifiers in order to exploit the strengths of the different data sources and to expand the pool of existing data available for the analysis., Design: use of IMER Registry, birth certificates and hospital discharge records to assess and diagnose congenital malformations; these data sources vary in terms of availability and accuracy., Setting and Participants: data from IMER Registry, SDO and CeDAP for year 2009 have been used., Results: the main results of the study are: 1. a perfect monitoring system does not exist, the algorithm proposed enabled the integration of three different sources and the evaluation of the capacity to identify different anomalies to be capitalized on; 2. the high number of false positives in audit reporting in 4 hospitals underlines the importance of the contribution of clinical experts in the review of the case to exclude coding errors, clarify unspecific diagnostic categories and identify syndromes; 3. the IMER Registry with over 30 years of experience has been the catalyst for this work by integrating clinical skills in the registry with the public health expertise of other professionals involved in information flows; 4. in the absence of a single comprehensive source of data collection, the advantage of the integration of the information collected from multiple sources is confirmed., Conclusion: birth defects surveillance programmes are critical resources that can provide fundamental information to take sound decisions in healthcare planning and for environmental epidemiology studies. This experience, whilst not mechanically transferable to other areas and circumstances, is a model for the future clinical and epidemiological management of congenital anomalies.

The birth certificate is a valid source of information on pregnancy, birth, the newborn and the parents: such information could be useful to identify and eventually to improve the sanitary, social and economic conditions in which this event takes place and which could have negative effects on pregnancy outcome. In this paper the authors present and analyze the results of a number of births in some sanitary structures in the Umbria region (Italy), carried out through the revision of data reported in the birth certificates during the year 2004.

Objective: To apply two different statistical methods to the live births of Lazio region in the years 2000-2003 and calculate updated estimate of the curves of percentiles of birth weight for gestational age., Design and Setting: The data analysed, including clinical-epidemiological and obstetric-neonatal information, have been extracted from birth certificates for the Italian region of Lazio for the period 2000-2003. Two methods of analysis, previously used in two Italian studies, have been applied. In the first method the observed distribution for each gestational week has been decomposed as a mixture of two normal distributions with homoscedastic components. The percentiles obtained, relative to the estimate of the component with the greater weight, have been then used in a third degree polynomial regression with gestational age as covariate, to estimate the final smoothed values. The second method assumes that, for a fixed gestational age, the position of the percentiles can be obtained as a polynomial function of Normal scores. Initially, for both sexes, the percentiles for every gestational age have been estimated using quantile regressions restricted to windows of three weeks. These have been subsequently smoothed by a polynomial model using the logarithm of the birth weight as the dependent variable and gestational age (up to the third degree), the z-score corresponding to the percentiles observed in the three week windows (up to the second degree), sex and the interaction between sex, gestational age and z-score as independent variables., Results: data relating to 157,335 single live births to Italian women resident in the Lazio region have been analysed. The raw curves of the birth weight percentiles for the preterm babies are very irregular for the more extreme percentiles because of the very low number of deliveries of live pre-term babies. The two methods have produced similar results. However, the first method was less influenced by extreme and potentially anomalous values. The second method tended to estimate percentiles beyond 41a week of gestation inferior to those of the previous weeks. A comparison has been made with the curves obtained in the two previous Italian studies and the new estimated percentiles tend to be inferior for the very preterm live births., Conclusions: this study has produced new curves of birth weight for gestational age. The analysis has been based on two different techniques, which have produced substantially similar results. For the tenth percentile, our estimates are lower than those obtained in previous studies suggesting a reduction in the late foetal mortality of babies who are not only pre-term but also of low weight. These results could be used in order to define new standards for birth weights in Italy.

Objectives: To evaluate how Hospital Discharge Records (SDO) and Certificates of Delivery Care (CEDAP) can be utilized to determine the number of deliveries and births; to calculate indicators for monitoring mother-infant health status, the exposure to risk factors during pregnancy and the health care provided., Design and Setting: CEDAP and SDO of all patients admitted to any hospital in the Veneto Region (4.7 million inhabitants, about 44,000 births) during the year 2003 were considered. An area-based study on deliveries and births, a retrospective cohort study on pregnancies, and a prospective cohort study on newborns up to the first year of age were performed to calculate health indicators. These indicators were compared to two official data sources: National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) and Italian National Institute of Health (ISS)., Main Outcome Measures: Descriptive indicators concerning mother-infant health status (conception, pregnancy, delivery, newborns and events during the first year of age)., Results: SDO provide highly accurate data on pregnancies, births and stillborns, which overlap with values reported by ISTAT Combining data from SDO and CEDAP with findings fom the process of tracking mothers and infants'cohorts, allows the calculation of many indicators on conception (n. 9), pregnancy (n. 8), delivery (n. 8), newborn (n. 15), and events during the first year of age (n. 6). In the Veneto Region the general fertility rate is 40.95% per hundred, with a relatively late mean age at delivery (32 years). Pregnant women undergoing prenatal invasive procedures are 23.5% and the caesarean section rate is 29%. Infants born to foreign mothers are 16%, whereas 2.5% are conceived through assisted reproduction techniques, 0.9% are very low birth weight, and 0.3% are extremely low birth weight; neonatal and infant mortality rates are 2.2% per hundred and 2.9% per hundred respectively., Conclusion: The proposed system is immediately feasible also at a local level, making reliable and informative data available to guide health policies.