Sífilis y embarazo: ？cómo diagnosticar y tratar oportunamente?

objective: this article presents a review of the epidemiology, clinical manifestations, diagnosis, treatment strategies, monitoring and prevention of gestational syphilis. materials and methods: cochrane, pubmed/ medline, scielo, ovid, lilacs databases and medical journals and literature and the cauca department？s health secretariat？s figures were searched using the following keywords: syphilis, syphilis in pregnancy, gestational syphilis and pregnancy, emphasising information made available during the last five years. 72 references were found; the 37 most relevant ones were chosen, mainly taking into account meta-analyses, randomised controlled trials, review articles, bulletins, texts, protocols and clinical guidelines. results: 110,000 newborn suffering from congenital syphilis were reported in latin-america and the caribbean in 2003, being the children of 330,000 women who had not received treatment during their antenatal controls. early identification and timely treatment of syphilis may prevent complications such as gestational or perinatal foetal death, low birth weight, neonatal disease or latent infection which may lead to late sequelae. conclusion: great difficulty is found in trying to achieve early detection and offering accurate treatment to all infected women. this has meant that this disease？s incidente is still increasing and the goal of eradicating congenital syphilis has not been accomplished, even though penicillin is still the medication of choice. strategies aimed at providing suitable antenatal control should be strengthened to ensure achieving this objective.