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Review Article Volume 12 Issue 3
Bridging the counselling gap: a real-time digital consultant interface for antenatally-diagnosed spina bifida
Pooja Sharma, Prabudh Goel
Received: August 17, 2026 | Published: September 3, 2026
Citation: Sharma P, Goel P. Bridging the counselling gap: a real-time digital consultant interface for antenatally-diagnosed spina bifida. Pregnancy & Child Birth. 2026;12(2):75-79. DOI: 10.15406/ipcb.2026.12.00346
Abstract
Background: The prenatal detection of spina bifida is one of the most consequential moments a family will ever face. In the space of a single conversation, parents are asked to absorb an unfamiliar diagnosis, understand a spectrum of possible outcomes and weigh options that now include termination, planned postnatal repair and open foetal surgery. Yet the person who first delivers this news is rarely the person best placed to explain the surgical trade-offs. Obstetricians and foetal-medicine specialists carry the counselling, while the paediatric surgeon or foetal surgeon who understands the operative realities is usually somewhere else, often in another hospital or another city. Current evidence: The literature is consistent and uncomfortable on this point: families frequently describe rushed, jargon-laden and occasionally inaccurate counselling, sometimes with premature pressure toward termination. Perspective: In this perspective, the authors argue that this is a solvable, communicationlogistics problem. A real-time, mobile, consultant-to-frontline digital interface (the kind already being piloted in Indian public-sector Paediatric Surgery) can place the right specialist voice into the counselling room at the moment it is needed, capture that counselling in a structured, timeline-linked record and hold it accountable against the child’s eventual outcome. Future Direction : The priority is to embed such interfaces within existing tele-foetalmedicine networks, test structured records against long-term outcomes and develop standardised counselling scripts across specialties. The technology already exists; what is missing is the policy commitment to make it standard practice.
Keywords: antenatal counselling, foetal surgery, myelomeningocele, shared decision- making, spina bifida, telemedicine
©2026 Sharma, et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and build upon your work non-commercially.