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Ball urethroplasty combined with Marshall-Marchetti-Krantz urethropexy appears to produce a similar outcome as suburethral sling in patients with urinary stress incontinence. This was the conclusion of a study of 67 patients who had one procedure or the other.

A longitudinal study of colonization by group B streptococcus (GBS) was conducted in 93 pregnant women and 92 of their infants. Positive cultures were obtained from vaginal swab specimens on at least one occasion during pregnancy from 20.4% of the women. Three types of carriage were observed: chronic, transient, and intermittent. At the time of delivery, 12.9% of the mothers were colonized by GBS. GBS colonization occurred in 41.7% of the infants of the mothers colonized intrapartum. Only 1.2% of infants intrapartum culture-negative mothers were colonized. Infants colonized at birth were culture negative by 4 months of age. This study suggests that interruption of vertical transmission of GBS from mother to infant not only would influence the incidence of early-onset GBS disease but also might reduce the incidence of late-onset GBS disease.

Prophylactic treatment of couples with oral penicillin has been recommended as a means of eradicating GBS from the parturient female. In 1977 and 1978 this hypothesis was tested in an investigation of couples from a middle and upper socioeconomic group in Houston, Texas. A group of 40 women, known to be colonized with GBS during the third trimester of pregnancy, and their husbands were treated simultaneously with oral penicillin. Patients were recultured 3 weeks following completion of therapy and at the time of delivery. At the time of delivery 67% of the women remained colonized with GBS. This percentage does not differ substantially from that obtained in a series of untreated colonized women. This study demonstrates that oral penicillin treatment of couples is not an effective means of reducing maternal colonization at the time of delivery.

Early-onset group B streptococcus (GBS) disease in the infant is acquired by vertical transmission from the mother colonized with GBS. Thirty-four women colonized with GBS were treated with intravenous ampicillin sodium during labor. None of their infants were colonized with GBS at birth or within 48 hours. Twenty-four women colonized with GBS received no antibiotic therapy; 14 (58%) of their infants were colonized with GBS at birth or by 48 hours. This difference was highly significant. Mechanisms by which this may have occurred were temporary suppression of GBS vaginal and rectal colonization, high concentration of ampicillin in the amniotic fluid, and transplacental transport of the antibiotic to the infant. In areas where GBS disease is prevalent, we recommend screening pregnant women (34 to 36 weeks' gestation) and treating those colonized with GBS (with no history of penicillin hypersensitivity) with intravenous ampicillin during labor.(JAMA 241:1245-1247, 1979)