If thoracic surgery is to remain an attractive career path for young physicians, it is essential to provide opportunities to balance work, residency, and family time. With an increasing proportion of women in thoracic surgery, it has become increasingly important to create a work environment that allows safe employment during pregnancy and breast feeding becomes an important concern.Based on the legal requirements of the German Maternity Protection Act (Mutterschutzgesetz), this interdisciplinary consensus paper was developed by representatives of thoracic surgery, anaesthesiology, and occupational medicine.The vast majority of thoracic operations can be performed by pregnant or breast-feeding surgeons. We established a risk-stratified list of operations with potentially acceptable risk, and a list of operations that pregnant or breast-feeding surgeons should not perform. A checklist aims to aid the individual implementation of thoracic surgery during pregnancy and breast feeding.Thoracic surgery can be performed by pregnant or breast-feeding surgeons when certain protective measures are observed. The prerequisite is the voluntary and independent decision of the surgeon, and the implementation of safety precautions by the employer.
Thoracic Surgery , Thoracic Surgical Procedures , Female , Pregnancy , Humans , Breast Feeding , Consensus , Employment
OBJECTIVES: The aim was to evaluate the longitudinal course of motor skills development in children with a view to improve the understanding of intra-individual variance. Previous publications have been based on cross-sectional data or analyzed longitudinal studies in a cross-sectional manner. DESIGN: Longitudinal. Year-to-year change. METHODS: The present study is based on motor function data collected in the LIFE Child study (Germany). The participants (6 to 17 years) completed parts of the motor tests according to the standard of the German Motor Performance Test 6-18 (DMT). For a total of 1653 participants, 4616 motor tests with an annual interval in the period 2011 to 2019 were included in the evaluation. RESULTS: We were able to produce gender and age-specific change centiles for the test items standing long jump, jumping sideways, push-ups, stand and reach and balancing walking backwards. Each set of centiles revealed a range of variability in motor development in children and adolescents, with distinct progressive patterns in the different test items and different genders. The supplied tables offer an indication of expected year-to-year change for each test item depending on age and gender. Depending on the test item and the mean age, a deterioration in test results after a one-year interval was observed, despite cross-sectional centiles showing an upward trend. CONCLUSION: We present a user-friendly tool as a way to assess individual dynamic changes in motor development of children and adolescents. In combination with the well-known cross-sectional centiles as baseline, this can be helpful for the scientific evaluation of motor skills tests and can also be used in school settings.
Child Development , Exercise , Motor Skills/physiology , Walk Test/methods , Adolescent , Child , Cross-Sectional Studies , Female , Germany , Humans , Longitudinal Studies , Male , Reference Standards , Time Factors
BACKGROUND: The present study describes motor skills in a large sample of German children and adolescents and investigates associations with age, gender, body-mass index, physical activity, television time, and socioeconomic status. METHODS: 2,106 children (1076 boys, 1030 girls) aged 4 to 17 years performed five different motor tests for strength (pushups, standing long jump), coordination (backward balancing, jumping side-to-side) and flexibility (forward bend) within the framework of the LIFE Child study (Leipzig, Germany). Anthropometric parameters were assessed through standardized measurement. Data on physical activity, television time, and socioeconomic status were collected via questionnaires. Linear regression analyses were applied to assess relations. RESULTS: Strength and coordination performance were higher in older than in younger children. While boys showed a higher performance in strengths tests than girls, girls performed better in flexibility and coordination during precision tasks (backward balancing). In terms of coordination under time constraint (jumping side-to-side), both genders produced similar results. Lower body-mass index, higher physical activity, and higher socioeconomic status were significantly related to better motor skills. Longer television times were significantly associated with lower performance in long jump. CONCLUSIONS: The present findings are similar to data collected at the beginning of the century, indicating that motor skills have hardly changed in recent years. The findings furthermore suggest that children from lower social strata, children with higher body weight, and children who move little have a higher risk of developing insufficient motor skills and should therefore be given special support.
Body Mass Index , Exercise , Motor Skills , Television , Adolescent , Child , Child, Preschool , Female , Germany , Humans , Male , Social Class
