The original antenatal care guideline was published by NICE in 2003. Since then a number of important pieces of evidence have become available, particularly concerning gestational diabetes, haemoglobinopathy and ultrasound, so that the update was initiated. This update has also provided an opportunity to look at a number of aspects of antenatal care: the development of a method to assess women for whom additional care is necessary (the ‘antenatal assessment tool’), information giving to women, lifestyle (vitamin D supplementation, alcohol consumption), screening for the baby (use of ultrasound for gestational age assessment and screening for fetal abnormalities, methods for determining normal fetal growth, placenta praevia), and screening for the mother (haemoglobinopathy screening, gestational diabetes, pre-eclampsia and preterm labour, chlamydia).
Copyright © 2008, National Collaborating Centre for Women’s and Children’s Health.