Confused: Maternal-fetal medicine

[sd2021]

how surgical is a maternal-fetal physican? I have seen maternal-fetal physician also written as maternal-fetal surgeon. Are they two diffrent things? Also how involved is a perinatologist in fetal surgery? or are they two diffrent fields ? if not can you be borded in both maternal-fetal medicine and fetal surgery? I just need a better understanding of what being a maternal-fetal physician entails.

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[Dr G Oogle]

how surgical is a maternal-fetal physican? I have seen maternal-fetal physician also written as maternal-fetal surgeon. Are they two diffrent things? Also how involved is a perinatologist in fetal surgery? or are they two diffrent fields ? if not can you be borded in both maternal-fetal medicine and fetal surgery? I just need a better understanding of what being a maternal-fetal physician entails.

Mfm's can do cesareans, cerclages and bedside procedures like amniocentesis and chorionic villous sampling, they can occasionally help cannulate the umbilical vessels for some fetal cardiac procedures but a pediatric interventional cardiologist will do the actual procedure.

Fetal "surgery" is pretty rare and is usually a Hail Mary because you're exposing the fetus to all sorts of badness by opening the uterus and membranes to do the surgery. The most common surgery in menigomyelocele repair and that is typically done by a pediatric neurosurgeon, mfm may get them access to the uterus though, similarly you can do placental laser coagulation for twin twin transfusion syndrome but most big places that I'm personally familiar with the pediatric surgeon will be the one that does it. However I think Colorado and maybe Michigan? Have Mfm's that do some or all of these surgeries. It is a really small niche and there is not a broad need for this level of subspecialization currently but no one knows what's coming down the pipeline in the future.