A city-based gynaecologist on December 13 announced the start of a modern super-speciality clinic to treat women or couples with "Bad Obstetric History" (BOH) and help them become parents.

Addressing a news conference here, Dr Satish Patki of Patki Hospital and Research Foundation said that about 15 per cent women have the problem of inability to have a healthy baby due to some complications occurring during pregnancy and this problem is called "BOH" in medical terms, he explained.

He said that such BOH cases are caused by problems either in the mother or both parents or on the embryo of foetus itself during the development stage. He further said that maternal disorders like diabetes, high viscosity of blood disorders or abnormalities in the genital tract make women susceptible to BOH, while chromosomal abnormalities of parents could also lead to abnormal fetal development.

Due to BOH, women faced various types of problems like recurrent abortions, repeated pre-term deliveries, having abnormalities in the babies or having abnormalities in pregnancies like tubal pregnancies, that deprived them of the joy of motherhood, he said. Dr Patki claimed that many parents with BOH have been successfully treated during last year by a team of expert doctors in the clinic and cited two instances to support his claim.

He said that one patient with history of ten repeated pregnancy losses has delivered a healthy child while in another case, a lady with history of having abnormalities in foetus, in the form of vesicular mole on seven occasions, has delivered twins, he added.