Abstract
The First Annual Philadelphia Conference on Prenatal Diagnosis Update was held on 12 June 2009. This meeting had a larger registration than expected, with over 225 healthcare professionals attending, including physicians, genetic counselors, nurses, midwives and sonographers, among others. The presentations of the meeting encompassed topics in the field of prenatal diagnosis, the current standards of prenatal diagnosis practice, innovations and new discoveries in the field, and their future implications for clinical practice. Preimplantation diagnosis, noninvasive prenatal diagnosis, counseling of patients with common genetics disorders, single-gene disorders and aneuploidies, prenatal diagnostic ultrasound for aneuploidy detection, management and treatment of congenital abnormalities, and legal consideration of prenatal diagnosis were all covered. In total, 14 sponsors with a sincere interest in education in the field participated with displays (listed in the acknowledgements). The program was planned and led by Professors Ossie Geifman-Holtzman and Laird Jackson, and certified genetic counselors, Janet Ober Berman and Elena Ashkinadze, with the speakers listed in the following report.
Acknowledgements
We thank Owen Montgomery MD, Chairman of the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology for hosting and supporting the meeting. We thank Cynthia Johnson and the CME office staff at Drexel College of Medicine for their administrative work which helped to make this meeting successful.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
We thank our sponsors and their support of education, care of the pregnant patient and their generous support of our conference: Genzyme (national and local), Philadelphia Foundation, Sequenom, Artemis, Lenetix, Athena, Alere, General Electric, Philips, Lab Corp, Quest Diagnostics, CMBDiagnostics, Signature Genomic, March of Dimes and Hologic. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.