[Alcoholic embryopathy (author's transl)].

Experience so far accumulated as well as clinical reports are likely to suggest the existence of a causal relationship between chronic abuse of alcohol by pregnant women and intrauterine fetal damage, usually with poor prognosis. The pathological pattern of alcoholic embryopathy is characterised primarily by inhibition of prenatal and postnatal growth, cerebral damage, cranio-facial, skeletal, and extremity dysmorphism, cardiovascular dysplasia, abnormality of genital organs and of palmar crease, and atypical dermatoglyphics. Incidence and severity of malformations were found to depend on quantitative alcohol consumption, length of exposure to alcohol, phase of the mother's alcohol disease at the time of pregnancy, timing of exposure to alcohol during pregnancy, and gentically differentiated activities of alcohol-dehydrogenase. Prophylactic action against alcoholic embryopathy can be based on persuasion of drinkers to change their drinking habits. Medical termination of pregnancy should be proposed in severe cases of chronic alcoholism.