Who needs prenatal counselling with a pediatric surgeon? Experience from a large tertiary care university hospital.

Objectives: To describe our experience with prenatal counselling for surgical anomalies in a large volume center. The secondary aim is to suggest a list of prenatal abnormalities warranting counselling by a pediatric surgeon.

Methods: We reviewed all prenatal counselling consultations performed by the pediatric surgery team between January 1st, 2015 and December 31st, 2016.

Results: A total of 169 patients or couples had a prenatal consultation with a pediatric surgeon. Prenatal work-up included a fetal MRI in 26% of cases, mainly for digestive and thoracic pathologies (56.1% of cases). Consultation with the pediatric surgeon led mainly to recommendations concerning the place of delivery. Induction for reasons related to the fetal anomaly occurred in 22.2% of cases. Most children were surgically treated within the first year of life (63.5%). Correlation between predicted prognosis and actual status at four years of life was 96.9%. Correlation between prenatal and postnatal diagnosis was 87.4%.

Conclusions: Prenatal counselling by a pediatric surgeon allows couples to obtain clear information on the pathology of their unborn child, giving them greater autonomy in their decision to continue the pregnancy.