Maternity - Tests For You And Your Baby
700,000 women get pregnant in the UK every year. Over 95% of these pregnancies result in the birth of a healthy baby. However, in a few cases, there are problems affecting the baby's development.
This could be a serious mental or physical abnormality. If health professionals and parents know about any problems early on, they can make decisions about how best to deal with it. This may involve preparing for special care that will be needed after the birth, or choosing to terminate the pregnancy (have an abortion).
What is antenatal screening?
Antenatal screening is a way of assessing whether the unborn baby (foetus) could develop or has developed an abnormality or other condition during pregnancy. Screening is not the same as diagnosis – it gives information on how likely a baby is to develop certain conditions.
If the risk of complications is found to be high, the mother may be offered a diagnostic test instead of pre-natal diagnosis. This is a test to find out for definate if the baby has the suspected condition.
Examples of diagnostic tests include amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling (CVS). They are not offered routinely because they are invasive tests (go into the body) and are unnecessary for the majority of women who have healthy pregnancies.
Ultrasound Screening
An ultrasound scan, also known as a sonograph, is a procedure that uses high frequency sound waves to create an image of an organ in the body. As sound waves are used, rather than radiation, the procedure is thought to be safe.
Ultrasound is very high frequency sound that cannot be heard by the human ear but can be detected by an ultrasound scanner. The frequency of the sound waves is around 10 million cycles per second (10MHz).
High frequency sound waves, directed at your body, are able to pass through liquid and soft tissues but not solid objects. When the ultrasound hits a dense or solid object, such as bile or a heart valve, it bounces back as an echo. Echoes of different strengths are reflected depending on the density of the object. A computer is used to translate the reflected ultrasound into an image.
To find out more about ultrasound scanning, what to expect and how to prepare please take a look at our patient information leaflet on the link below: