Nuchal Translucency Scan And Double Marker

When you are pregnant, your unborn baby’s health and safety become very important. While the delivery and thought of holding your baby would fill you with excitement, you will also find yourself constantly reading more, talking to people and asking a lot of questions to your Doctor.

Nurturing a baby inside your womb for nine months is no mean feat and during this entire period, your Doctor will recommend regular scans and tests to ascertain that everything is progressing well in the pregnancy. There are scans and tests that will determine the state of your health - diabetes, blood pressure and the like, while also understanding the position of your placenta and womb.

Then there are other scans and tests that help your Doctor understand how your baby is doing. There are tests to measure your baby’s heartbeat, it’s crown to rump length, developments of the organs and position. All these tests and scans are spread out through the three trimesters of pregnancy.

What Is A Nuchal Translucency Scan?

Performed between the 13th and 15th week of pregnancy, this is a very significant scan. While many hospitals make it optional, at the Birthplace, it’s a mandatory test. So, when your Doctor recommends it, please don’t panic. A requirement to undergo this scan doesn’t mean bad news. It helps your doctor understand the possibilities of the baby having chromosomal abnormalities.

There is clear fluid-filled space behind the back of your unborn baby. The thickness of this space helps your Doctor understand whether your baby has an anomaly. The Nuchal Translucency Scan is an abdominal ultrasound that helps measure the thickness of this area. If the scan reveals an abnormal thickness, it could indicate/predict the possibility of Down’s Syndrome and in some cases, other problems like Edward Syndrome.

This test is critical because the results of this test can often help your Doctor manage these abnormalities better.

Like mentioned, the results of this test can only be indicative and not conclusive. If your Doctor thinks it’s necessary, he or she might also ask for some blood tests. On certain occasions, either an amniocentesis, in which a sample of the amniotic fluid is tested, or chorionic villus sampling, in which a sample of your placental tissue is used for further investigations.

Double Marker Test

Following up on the Nuchal Translucency Test, there is another test that helps indicate the presence of a chromosomal abnormality in your unborn child. This test is known as the double marker test and it’s a blood test that measures.

1. Free beta hCG

Pregnancy Associated Plasma Protein A or PAPP A

A combination of both these results can help your doctor determine the chances of your unborn child having any problem. The results of this test are generally combined with your age and the gestational age of the baby and are represented in the form of ratios. These ratios talk about the chances of the baby having a defect. Anything between 1:10 to 1: 250 is considered positive, which means one in 10, or one in 250 pregnancies could result in this defect, which is fairly high. A negative test would be above 1:1000