Abstract
Many patients have anxiety regarding drug use during pregnancy because they fear their child will be born with congenital anomalies. Anxiety is heightened because the mother frequently feels guilt, believing she may have damaged her baby through some action of her own.
Since March 1995, counseling a pregnant woman about possible effects of a drug was started at clinical department of obstetrics and gynecology by a pharmacist.
In order to further study the development of medication counseling, we searched and analyzed 143 patients. 74 patients had therapeutic exposure during pregnancy and 69 had inadvertent exposure during pregnancy. An analysis of our data was made on the basis of the age, the type of disorder, the number of doses, the route of administration, the timing of the exposure, and outcome.
A pregnant woman takes an average of 4.4 medications and takes up to 22 medications during pregnancy. 24 of 74 (32.4%) women asked our advice before conception. Only 1 of 144 (0.9%) cases showed a major birth defect (cardiovascular defect).
These findings suggest that all counseling regarding drug or medication use during pregnancy should occur before conception. Our role of teratogen counseling is ultimately to provide the patient with as much information as possible and encourage her to make her own decisions regarding whether or not to continue the pregnancy.
