05/10/2020
Last year, a review published in the British Medical Journal showed that universal antenatal screening for the group B strep bacteria may cause more harm than good.
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The reviewers found that universal screening for group B strep "would have led to overtreatment of 138 583 (99.75%) women in labour."
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Given that the treatment is giving intravenous (by drip) antibiotics during labour, which have side effects and mean that movement and options are limited, this is an important finding.
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If you’d like to know more about group B strep and your options, take a look at www.sarawickham.com/gbse
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That page has details of my book on this topic – which helps parents, professionals and others to understand the issues and the evidence relating to the screening and prophylactic measures offered in the hope of preventing early-onset group B strep (EOGBS) disease – and it also contains a link to my information hub, where you can read about this study and many others.
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