Screening for intimate partner violence was also highlighted at the meeting, including an award-winning paper by Dr. Jennifer Ballard Dwan, a maternal-fetal medicine fellow at Brown University, Providence, R.I.
Dr. Dwan compared screening for toxoplasmosis, which has an estimated incidence of 0.001%, with intimate partner violence, which occurs in approximately 4%-8% of pregnancies.
Among 324 randomly selected pregnant women seen at private and public clinics, 68% were asked about cat exposure and 16% were screened for intimate partner violence. Of note, 15% of women screened positive for domestic violence when asked, she said.
Women attending public clinics were far more likely to be screened for domestic violence than were privately insured women, while the reverse was true for screening about cat exposure.
During the press briefing, Dr. Phelan said she “almost … worries more” about middle- to higher-income women being missed during depression screening as well. When it's a 16-year-old who's in a crisis pregnancy, people are more likely to accept that she might be depressed, she said.
Old myths die hard when it comes to a married, economically stable woman with a “very planned pregnancy” who becomes depressed. “There's an idea that if she were strong, she could overcome it,” certainly without taking a medication that has a remote chance of harming her baby.
“I don't see us hesitating to tell the overweight, type 2 diabetic patient [to take her diabetes medication],” said Dr. Phelan.