[Coumarin embryopathy]

Anticoagulant therapy using coumarin derivatives (vitamin K antagonists) during early pregnancy may result in a characteristic embryopathy appearing as a phaenocopy of chondrodysplasia punctata (Conradi-Hünermann's disease). This has been suggested in advance by observations made in newborns of mothers who had been treated previously with warfarin or acenocoumon. Similar observations made in a newborn after the mother's treatment with phencoumon in early pregnancy are described in this paper. Coumarin embryopathy is proposed as a common term.