Pregnancy Health Screening

Pregnancy Health Screens

NHS offers free screening tests to pregnant women to try and find out the condition of your unborn child. These tests can help you identify if your unborn child has any health problems such as physical abnormalities, Down’s syndrome or any infectious disease. After the test, you can make care or treatment choices during pregnancy or after the baby is born. Although screening tests are not perfect, they offer enough time to get earlier treatments and critical health decisions. However, some screening results have misled people in either being told that their baby is at a higher risk of having a health problem while it’s not true. On the other hand, some people have been informed that their baby are safe only to realise later that the baby has a problem which was not identified. Therefore, screening tests do not give a definite answer but it is used to tell if you or your baby are at a higher or low risk of having a problem.

Types of Pregnancy Health Screening

Ultrasound scans, blood tests or both are screening tests that are offered to pregnant women. ultrasound scans are used to detect any physical abnormalities e.g. spina bifida while blood tests are used to find out the risk of an inherited disorder e.g. sickle cell anaemia. Health practitioners uses both ultrasound scans and blood tests to find the risk of a chromosomal abnormality e.g. Down’s syndrome. If you decide to have screening tests, you and your unborn child are not exposed to any risk whatsoever but as a mother you may have to make serious decisions upon getting some results. For instance, if your child has a serious disorder e.g. Down’s syndrome, you may have to decide whether to continue or terminate the pregnancy. You should however understand that health professionals will always support the decision you choose.

There are different types of screening tests and they are offered at different times during the entire pregnancy. Sickle cell anaemia and thalassaemia screening tests are usually offered before 10 weeks of pregnancy while Down’s syndrome tests is carried out when you are 10-14 weeks pregnant. Finally, when you are about 18-21 weeks pregnant, you will be offered screening for abnormalities. Having screen tests is a personal choice and you can discuss each of the tests with your doctor before having it to decide whether or not you will have it. However, NHS may recommend some tests such as blood tests for infectious diseases, new born checks and eye screening especially if you have a pre-existing diabetes.

Are Pregnancy Screenings Confidential?

Finally, you should understand that screening results are kept confidential to maintain privacy. Therefore, only the staff who need to see the results sees them to maintain confidentiality of the mother and the new born baby.