The Role of Prenatal and Postnatal Counseling in the Management on Disorders of Sex Development: A Review

This study aims to review the literature and to investigate how prenatal and postnatal counseling interfere in subjects with Disorders of Sex Development (DSD). The articles were obtained through search on bibliographic databases: Web of Science, Scopus, Scielo, MEDLINE, and LILACS and selected using the guideline following the Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review protocol and answering. The search identified 181 articles. After the methodological screening, 7 studies were eligible for this narrative review. 16 cases of different types of DSD were evaluated in the studies. In this case, different types of prenatal and postnatal counseling were carried out to address the diagnosis. In most cases, prenatal counseling was based on a genetic point of view and postnatal was based on psychological and educational follow-up of the family. There are different manners to conduct prenatal and postnatal counseling in cases of DSD. However, the data shows that there is a lack of specific protocols for adequate counseling of patients and families in the context of DSD. In addition, previous studies have only described this aspect in superficial forms. Therefore, further investigations are necessary to establish a scientific protocol for this matter.