IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aph/ajpbhl/1999894557-560_0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An epidemic of congenital syphilis in Jefferson County, Texas, 1994- 1995: Inadequate prenatal syphilis testing after an outbreak in adults

Author

Listed:
  • Southwick, K.L.
  • Guidry, H.M.
  • Weldon, M.M.
  • Mertz, K.J.
  • Berman, S.M.
  • Levine, W.C.

Abstract

Objectives: After a syphilis epidemic in Jefferson County, Texas, in 1993 and 1994, congenital syphilis prevalence and risk factors were determined and local prenatal syphilis screening practices were assessed. Methods. Medical records were reviewed, pregnant women with syphilis were interviewed, and prenatal care providers were surveyed. Results. Of 91 women, 59 (65%) had infants with congenital syphilis. Among African Americans, the prevalence per 1000 live births was 24.1 in 1994 and 17.9 in 1995. Of the 50 women with at least 2 prenatal care visits who had infants with congenital syphilis, 15 (30%) had received inadequate testing. Only 16% of 31 providers obtained an early third, trimester syphilis test on all patients. Conclusions. Inadequate prenatal testing contributed to this outbreak of congenital syphilis.

Suggested Citation

  • Southwick, K.L. & Guidry, H.M. & Weldon, M.M. & Mertz, K.J. & Berman, S.M. & Levine, W.C., 1999. "An epidemic of congenital syphilis in Jefferson County, Texas, 1994- 1995: Inadequate prenatal syphilis testing after an outbreak in adults," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 89(4), pages 557-560.
    • Handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1999:89:4:557-560_0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:1999:89:4:557-560_0. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.apha.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.