Hemolytic disease of the fetus: a plea for restraint

The recent addition of fetal blood sampling and transfusion techniques to the management schemes for hemolytic disease of the fetus has expanded clinical options for patient care. Coincident with these techniques is a new aggressiveness toward sensitized pregnancies that, upon review of available data, selects more patients for early and invasive testing than appears necessary. This paper explores the issues of invasive testing and offers guidelines that are more conservative than those recommended in recent reports.