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Evidently...

Department of Primary Care, University of Oxford
Oxford, UK

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Pregnancy has become highly medicalised over the last century, and is much safer as a result, but we are still learning how best to manage it. Until recently, most early pregnancy failure was treated surgically by curettage, but increasingly medical management has been recognised as a safe option. This is confirmed in a recent American trial ( Am J Obstet Gynecol 2007;196:31.e1–7[CrossRef][Medline] ) which found that women given intravaginal misoprostol rarely needed further intervention although they experienced more bleeding. Their curettage rate of 3% contrasts with 30–40% of medically managed miscarriages in a large British trial (MIST: BMJ 2006;332:1235–40[Abstract/Free Full Text] ). Large changes in prenatal diagnosis are also afoot, now that techniques have been developed to isolate fetal DNA from cells circulating in maternal blood. Soon it may be possible to base rhesus factor prophylaxis on non-invasive RhDgenotyping. . . [Full text of this article]