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Article: Routine herpes screening in pregnancy pays off.(GUEST EDITORIAL)
- Article from:
- OB GYN News
- Article date:
- May 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 International Medical News Group. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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It is cost effective and good clinical care to screen all pregnant women with a type-specific antibody test for herpes.
Although the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists does not currently recommend it, I have found that screening is essential to properly managing pregnancy and limiting the risk of neonatal infection.
I'm certainly not the first person to come up with this idea. Dr. Zane A. Brown, an ob.gyn. in Seattle, for example, has made this case eloquently in the literature. But routine screening is a practice that I use in my clinic and one that still too few physicians are employing.
Let's look at a fairly typical case. A ...