Congenital syphilis

To the Editor: As Mclntosh stated in his editorial on congenital syphilis (Nov. 8 issue),¹ almost every case is preventable. I reviewed all reported cases of congenital syphilis in Los Angeles County in 1987, 1988, and 1989. Of the more than 1000 reported cases, 154 were symptomatic.² Of these, only two were similar to the four nonpreventable cases described by Dorfman and Glaser in the same issue of the Journal,³ in which both mother and infant had negative serologic tests for syphilis at the time of delivery. In a third case in Los Angeles, the mother had a positive.