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Review
. 2022 Jan;64(1):14-22.
doi: 10.1111/dmcn.15022. Epub 2021 Aug 22.

Antenatal counselling for prospective parents whose fetus has a neurological anomaly: part 1, experiences and recommendations for service design

Anthony R Hart  1 , Brigitte Vollmer  2 , David Howe  3 , Sally Boxall  3 , Nicola Foulds  4 , Patricia de Lacy  5 , Chakra Vasudevan  6 , Paul D Griffiths  7 , Hilary Piercy  8
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Free article
Review

Antenatal counselling for prospective parents whose fetus has a neurological anomaly: part 1, experiences and recommendations for service design

Anthony R Hart et al. Dev Med Child Neurol. 2022 Jan.
Free article

Abstract

Prospective parents whose fetus is diagnosed with a neurological anomaly go through a complex range of emotions. They describe their discussions of antenatal counselling from health care professionals as focusing too much on the nature of the anomaly involving unintelligible medical terminology, when what they really want is a picture of the best- and worst-case scenarios. Whilst information on the level of risk for their fetus is important, it is not the parents' primary concern. When statistics for risk are given, they may not be as well understood as the health care professionals think. This review discusses the published evidence on antenatal counselling and recommendations for explaining risk to parents of fetuses with neurological anomalies. From this data we make recommendations for the organization of antenatal counselling services.

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References

REFERENCES

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