Genital herpes simplex virus infections complicating pregnancy. Natural history and peripartum management.

The current practice of obtaining weekly herpes simplex virus cultures from 34 weeks of gestation until the onset of labor is costly, traumatic, anxiety producing to patient and physician and directed at the wrong population; also, it increases the rate of cesarean section but has not arrested the rising rate of neonatal herpes. Instead, the entire obstetric population should receive a careful history, speculum examination of the cervix, tactile examination of the labia and herpes simplex virus cultures of the cervix and labia at the onset of labor.