The Present State, Mission and Social Significance of Perinatal Medicine

Questions associated with human reproduction are being studied with mounting interest all over the world. The most discussed and the most serious problem is the population explosion in the underdeveloped countries, but reproduction problems (though of a different type) also occur in the more advanced countries. Here, more and more interest is being focussed on the care of mother and child, with special reference to the quality of the offspring. This type of very exacting care requires close cooperation not only between the obstetrician and the paediatrician, but also with specialists in other, related fields (the geneticist, childre’ns neurologist, psychologist, sociologist, pedadogue, etc). Successful team work presupposes at least partial knowledge, by each member of the team, of the work of the others, however. On the other hand, diagnostics and therapeutic techniques (intensive antenatal and postnatal care) have progressed so rapidly during the past decade, owing to the development of medical electronics and modern biochemistry, that the obstetrician and the paediatrician, who previously concerned themselves with the whole of their subject, can hardly keep pace and, by a natural process, this development has of necessity given rise to a new interdisciplinary branch — perinatal medicine.