Abdominal Wall Defects in Prenatal Medicine

Abstract

Abdominal Wall Defects (AWD) are anomalies of prenatal development which can manifest with different types of entities, also associated with malformations of the other fetal body districts, and are one of the main live birth defects; diagnosed in prenatal life, thanks to Prenatal Medicine (PM) monitoring protocols, those defects, with different anatomical characteristics, are likely caused by several multifactorial events that compromise the physiological development of the embryo – fetal anterior abdominal wall. The aim of our brief communication is to retrace the significant steps of the discovery and disclosure of this human intrauterine life pathology. Total ADW have, at our time, a prevalence of about eight in 10.000 ([1]: European surveillance of congenital anomalies, Chart 1-A,B,C,D); the importance of the data called prevalence, used to plan health prevention and to understand the damage inducted by a specific pathogenic event in a population, should always be emphasized; it expresses the ratio between the number of affected people in a subjects of a specific territory, at a defined time, and the total number of individuals in the population, at the same period; hence, several international studies had given it in a lot value, as well as for epidemiological surveillance [2].