Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Info

March 1st, 2010

During pregnancy, the woman is greatly at risk and vulnerable to toxins and other harmful substances. Teratogens, such as alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs are some of the substances that may cause negative effects towards the fetus inside the mother’s womb. These substances would in turn result to a sick or worse, abnormal baby.

Alcohol is one teratogen that could greatly affect the woman’s pregnancy. People may not know of its danger and still allow a woman to drink alcoholic drinks during her pregnancy, but the effect of this would be carried by the baby for the rest of his or her life. Alcohol is one of the known causes of mental and physical birth defects specifically in the United States. Though, this is only a probability, the rate is high.

For one, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome is a disorder that can occur to the embryo when a pregnant woman ingests alcohol during pregnancy. Alcohol crosses the placental barrier and can stunt fetal growth, create distinctive facial stigmata, damage neurons and brain structures, and cause other physical, mental, or behavioral problems. The main effect of FAS is lasting central nervous system damage, especially to the brain. Developing brain cells and structures are underdeveloped by prenatal alcohol exposure, often creating an array of primary cognitive and functional disabilities including poor memory, attention deficits, impulsive behavior, and poor cause-effect reasoning, as well as secondary disabilities for example, mental health problems, and drug addiction.

The signs and symptoms of a having fetal alcohol syndrome are low birth mass, small head circumference, developmental delay, organ dysfunction, facial abnormalities, including smaller eye openings, flattened cheekbones, and indistinct philtrum (an underdeveloped groove between the nose and the upper lip), epilepsy, poor management, poor socialization skills, such as difficulty building and maintaining friendships and relating to groups, lack of imagination, learning difficulties, including poor memory, inability to understand concepts such as time and money, poor language comprehension, poor problem-solving skills, behavioral problems including hyperactivity, inability to concentrate, social withdrawal, stubbornness, impulsiveness, and anxiety.

As said earlier, damage of the central nervous system is the main feature of fetal alcohol syndrome. Central nervous system damage can be evaluated in three areas such as structural, neurological, and functional impairments. Structural impairments may include microcephaly (small head size) of two or more standard deviations below the average, or other abnormalities in brain structure. During the first trimester of pregnancy, alcohol interferes with the migration and organization of brain cells, which can make structural deficits within the brain. During the third trimester, damage can be caused to the hippocampus, which plays a role in memory, learning, emotion, and encoding visual and auditory information, all of which can create neurological and functional CNS impairments as well.

The evaluation of neurological deficiencies will take place when structural deficiencies do not exist. Neurological problems are expressed as either hard signs, such as epilepsy or other seizure disorders, or soft signs. Soft signs are broader, nonspecific symptoms, such as impaired fine motor skills, neurosensory hearing loss, poor gait, clumsiness, poor eye-hand coordination.

Functional impairments are assessed when structural or neurological impairments does not exist. Functional impairments are abnormalities due to prenatal alcohol exposure (rather than hereditary causes or postnatal insults) in observable and measurable domains related to daily functioning, often referred to as developmental disabilities.

No evidence exists that can determine exactly how much alcohol ingestion will produce birth defects. Individual women process alcohol differently. Other factors differ the results, too, such as the age of the mother, the timing and regularity of the alcohol ingestion, and whether the mother has eaten any food while drinking.

Alcohol quickly passes the placental barrier and the fetus is less equipped to get rid of alcohol than its mother, so the fetus tends to obtain a high concentration of alcohol, which remains longer than it would in the mother’s system. That explains why the child is the one largely affected when in fact it is the mother who consumes the alcohol. This such a sad truth.

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