Prevention and Prediction of Preterm Birth-Status Quo in the Last 50 Years

Editorial: Etiology, Prevention and Prediction of Preterm Birth- What is New?

“…Factors possibly contributing to but not completely explaining this upward trend include increasing rates of multiple births, greater use of assisted reproduction techniques, increases incidence of births among women over 34 years of age, changes in clinical practices, etc. Changes in the definitions of fetal loss, stillbirth and early neonatal death may also have contributed to the substantial increases in PTB rates recorded in developed countries in the past two decades [8,9].…”

“…PTB is multifactorial disorder which creation involves various exogenous and endogenous risk factors whose interactions initiated early, start asynchronous delivery mechanism. PTB is now thought to be a syndrome initiated by multiple mechanisms, including infection/ inflammation, uteroplacental ischaemia or haemorrhage, placental malperfusion, Mullerian anomalies, uterine overdistension, stress, and other immunologically mediated processes [9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…Still, the infection is difficult to detect due to the limitations of conventional microbial techniques and the difficulties in obtaining appropriate diagnostic samples during pregnancy. Spontaneous PTBs that occur before the 34th week of gestation are strongly associated with intrauterine infection [9,21]. [22].…”

“…Placental abruption is a major obstetrical emergency. General risk factors for placental abruption are maternal smoking, use of alcohol, placenta preavia, pre-eclampsia and chorionamnionitis [9,25,26].…”

“…Secondary prevention involves steps that can be taken to attenuate, stop or reverse the progress of spontaneous PTB in its early stages, before advanced cervical dilatation by using tocolytic agents. Tertiary prevention is prevention of neonatal complications connected with prematurity by using antenatal corticosteroids for artificial fetal lung maturity [9].…”