Safdar A Malik, Arif T Khan, M Shaukat, M Arshad Chohan.
Antenatal Sonographic Evaluation of Gastrointestinal Anomalies.
Biomedica Jan ;13(1):17-20.

A wide range of abnormalities of foetal gastrointestinal tract is currently detected by antenatal ultrasound. During the last four years 8798 patients had ultrasound at a private clinic. In a total of 8798, 6336 patients were screened for antenatal assessment. The real number of congenital malformations detected during this period were 174/6336. Eleven cases of different gastrointestinal anomalies were detected during antenatal screening. This gives an incidence of 2.74% in this series. Four patients had polyhydramnia 5 had normal liqour and 2 had oligohydramnia of these 36.37% patients were primigravida. The age ranged from 17 year to 35 year with an average age of 27 years. Over 9% (9. 09%) had twin pregnancy out of which one fetus had doudenal atresia while the other was normal. Six (54.55%) were males. History of cousin marriage was observed in 4 patients (36.37%). After delivery 5 babies survived after surgery while 2 were lost to follow, 3 died after surgery 1 died without surgery. This study of patients indicates that with good realtime ultrsound equipment and background knowledge one can diagnose varieties of gastrointestinal anomalies antenatally so that they can be managed accordingly by expert hands and the foetuses with isolated surgically correctable anomalies can be made viable and useful in the society.

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