Obstetrics, like other branches of medicine, is a mixture of exciting advances and
frustrating impasses. One of the latter is the problem of low birth weight (LBW) babies.
As de Bernabe and colleagues from Madrid point out in their review of risk factors
(page 3), the incidence of LBW has not decreased in recent years despite our better
understanding of the risk factors. Perhaps this is because the most important of these
factors are socio-economic and the remedy for these problems lies in the hands of
politicians, not doctors. Nevertheless it is the duty of obstetricians to point out
that the problems of deprived women are particularly grievous in our specialty. We
have previously pointed out that maternal mortality rates show a frightening difference
between the richest and poorest women in single country. Internationally, perinatal
mortality rates reflect the lack of resources in the poorest countries. From a technical
point of view, however, the frustration for obstetricans is that we lack effective
methods for either preventing preterm labour or improving fetal growth in utero.
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© 2004 Published by Elsevier Inc.
