This book is a guide to foetal medicine for practising obstetricians. Its key aim is to help improve prenatal and perinatal management of high risk pregnancies, with an emphasis on monitoring and diagnosis. Beginning with an overview of prenatal diagnosis, the following sections cover prenatal counselling, non-invasive prenatal screening, invasive diagnostic techniques, laboratory techniques, antenatal use of foetal therapy, prenatal operative scope, ethical and medicolegal aspects, and the future of prenatal diagnosis. The final section offers FIGO best practice guidelines. This comprehensive guide is highly illustrated with more than 350 clinical photographs, figures and tables. Key Points Practical guide to foetal medicine for practising obstetricians Key aim to help improve prenatal and perinatal management of high risk pregnancies Includes FIGO best practice guidelines Highly illustrated with more than 350 photographs, figures and tables

Heteromorphisms are microscopically visible variant regions on chromosomes and are transmitted as Mendelian traits. Studies of heteromorphic variants allow determination of parental origin, paternity testing, maternal contamination in prenatal samples or tracing the chromosome to a parent in numerical or structural chromosomal abnormalities. Genetic counseling is important to interpret these common variants in context to patient history as they may have no consequences to mild to moderate consequences. This work presents the study and clinical correlation of common heteromorphic variations in 6166 individuals with bad obstetric history, developmental delay, fetal studies (fetal cells in amniotic fluid or product of conception) with appropriate controls. A review of published literature on the subject is also included. This work was also presented by the author as a doctoral dissertation (PhD in Life sciences) at Mumbai University India in 2012