Doha, Jul 12 (Gulf Times): Women of child-bearing age have been advised to pay extra attention to their health and also exercise caution while taking medications to avoid congenital spine anomalies in their unborn babies.
“Congenital spine deformities have no specific cause but some have been found related to exposure to radiation during pregnancy or taking of some types of toxic medications,” a visiting specialist orthopaedic and spine surgeon from Canada Dr Khaled Faraj said.
He highlighted that congenital deformity as well as degenerative ones such as arthritis can be due to ageing, family history, occupation – lifting of heavy object and doing heavy work - malnutrition or deficiency of calcium causing weak bones and leading to osteoporosis, especially among women aged 45-50 years and other pathological diseases in the bones.
“As there are many unknown factors that could lead to these problems, there are many suggestions for women in child-bearing age to take some supplements such as folic acid a few months before getting pregnant, during conception and after delivery to avoid neuro-tubular infections and other congenital deformities of the spine in their children,” he explained.
He said that there were a lot of screening tests that can be done during pregnancy, especially during the first 12 weeks, to identify congenital problems early for primary or secondary prevention.
However, Dr Faraj said unfortunately, congenital spine problems cannot be corrected as it is difficult to control intra-uterine (while baby is inside the womb), but if detected early in pregnancy, women can be advised to take more care to prevent further degenerative damage.
“Patients’ education is very important, especially regarding how to avoid some kinds of teracogenic medications that may cause some congenital anomalies. They should also take other screening tests for sexually transmitted diseases, avoid exposure to radiation, avoiding smoking as it is one of the risk factors for congenital problems as well as avoiding hard drugs such as cocaine or heroin,” he advised.
He explained that there were other different causes of spine injury, which could be due to accident or fall from height or tumours, which can affect both males and females.
He stressed that spine deformity comes in different forms, including neo-natal spine problems (born with a child), enfantile - affecting children between age three – 10 years, others manifesting at adolescent to middle-age and those occurring later in life without specific cause.
“Apart from these causes, to prevent spine disease later in life, it is also very important to check school-going children for congenital spine deformities for early treatments as these will prevent any advanced spine diseases when they grow older,” he suggested.