Antenatal care and intrapartum management

Abstract

Cost-effective care is an increasingly important issue in medicine. This will necessitate re-evaluating many aspects of antenatal and intrapartum care, including health-care delivery systems and routine surveillance techniques for uncommon events such as Down syndrome. It will demand justification for broadening indications for cesarean section by including fetal macrosomia and intensify the search for the causes of preterm labor. As new techniques are developed for intrapartum monitoring, such as fetal electrocardiography, fetal lactic acid levels, and near-infrared spectroscopy, they, too, will have to be determined to be cost-effective before attaining a role in clinical management.