What is Antenatal care (ANC)
Antenatal care (ANC) provides monitoring and regular follow-up of maternal and fetal health during pregnancy. Women with appropriate ANC tend to have better delivery and birth outcomes.
What is Prenatal Care ?
Prenatal care, also known as antenatal care, is a type of preventive healthcare. It is provided in the form of medical checkups, consisting of recommendations on managing a healthy lifestyle and the provision of medical information such as maternal physiological changes in pregnancy, biological changes, and prenatal nutrition including prenatal vitamins, which prevents potential health problems throughout the course of the pregnancy and promotes the mother and child's health alike.[1][2]The availability of routine prenatal care, including prenatal screening and diagnosis, has played a part in reducing the frequency of maternal death, miscarriages, birth defects, low birth weight, neonatal infections and other preventable health problems.
Traditional prenatal care in high-income countries generally consists of:
- monthly visits during the first two trimesters (from the 1st week to the 28th week)
- fortnightly visits from the 28th week to the 36th week of pregnancy
- weekly visits after 36th week to the delivery, from the 38th week to the 42nd week
- Assessment of parental needs and family dynamics
Measurement limitations.
Receiving antenatal care during pregnancy does not guarantee the receipt of interventions that are effective in improving maternal health. Receiving antenatal care at least four times, which is recommended by WHO, increases the likelihood of receiving effective maternal health interventions during antenatal visits. Importantly, although the indicator for ‘at least one visit’ refers to visits with skilled health providers (doctor, nurse or midwife), ‘four or more visits’ refers to visits with any provider, since standardized global national-level household survey programmes do not collect provider data for each visit. In addition, standardization of the definition of skilled health personnel is sometimes difficult because of differences in training of health personnel in different countries.
- Laparoscopic adhesiolysis
- Diagnostic laparoscopy
- Laparoscopic surgery for endometriosis (operative lap for endometriosis) – all stages of endometriosis, recurrent endometriosis
- Laparoscopy for chronic pelvic pain
- Laparoscopic surgery for tubal recanalisation (reversal of tubal sterilisation)
- Laparoscopic Cervicopexy, Round Ligament plication, mosco witz
- Laparoscopic sling surgeries (prolapse in young, nulliparous women)
- Laparoscopy for all gynaecological malignancies (cancer of ovary, uterus, cervix) with lymphadenectomy
- Laparoscopic unification surgery (bicornuate or didelphic uterus (double))
- Laproscopic repair of vesico – vaginal fistula (abnormal communication between bladder and vagina leading to continuous dribbling of urine)
- Laparoscopic cholecystectomy