Validating Guiding Principles & Recommendations for the Role of Meconium FAEE Screening
Channel: Children's Healthcare Canada
Date: 08/03/2012

Exposure to alcohol in the womb can affect the brain's capacity for memory, learning and abstract thinking.  Indication of prenatal ethanol exposure is an important key to identifying children at risk for FAS/FASD.  Meconium testing complies well with WHO guidelines on essential criteria for screening procedures.  It is one of the screening methods identified as part of CAPHC's  National Screening Tool Kit for Children and Youth Identified and Potentially Affected by Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, that was launched in October 2010. The complete Tool Kit  can be viewed and downloaded from the CAPHC Knowledge Exchange Network (www.ken.caphc.org).

In September 2011 CAPHC in partnership with the Public Health Agency of Canada facilitated a Meconium Screening Workshop and webinar that was held in P.E.I.  At that meeting panelists presented the medical, legal, ethical and epidemiological perspectives on meconium screening.  Proceedings and recommendations from this workshop have subsequently been published: MacLeod S., Koren G., Meconium Testing for Fatty Acid Ethyl Esters: A 2011 Status Report; J Popul Ther Clin Pharmacol Vol 18(3):e500-e502; November 5, 2011.

Consensus was reached on a series of principles and guidelines for the role of Meconium FAEE Screening and the need for further dialogue expressed.   CAPHC and the National FASD Steering Committee would like to invite you to participate in a webinar to review and enhance these principles and guidelines and contribute to this important national dialogue on the role of meconium testing.