Fetal medicine.
Fetal medicine is the practice of medicine where the patient is the fetus. The traditional activities of clinical medicine: prevention, screening, diagnosis, and therapy are directed at decreasing, identifying and treating fetal disease. Examples of successful preventative, screening, diagnostic and therapeutic maneuvers involving the fetus are presented. A plea is made for the systematic evaluation of the new technology being developed in fetal medicine. The same standard of evidence-the randomized, controlled clinical trial-which is more and more applied to traditional medical practice-should also be the gold standard for fetal medicine.
Feldman
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Division of General Paediatrics, Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
D005260:Female; D005315:Fetal Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000628:therapy; D006801:Humans; D008403:Mass Screening / Q000379:methods; D011247:Pregnancy; D011296:Prenatal Diagnosis; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D016216:Ultrasonography, Prenatal