early screen for down syndrom

Hi this is my first message on the site. I am 34 yrs old and pregnant
with my 4th child. I went for a ultrasound last week and I was 11
weeks pregnant and they did a nuchal translucency and blood screeen to
give me my risk for downs syndrom. I was not expecting to be at a
high risk but my test came back high risk and I'm scared and my
anxiety is going thru the roof. I have to wait until Aug, 25th for a
amino. then two weeks for the results. My nuchal thikness was 2.8 mm
has anyone else had this situation? Its hard to enjoy my pregnancy at
this point.

In article ,
Wanda wrote:
Hi this is my first message on the site. I am 34 yrs old and pregnant
with my 4th child. I went for a ultrasound last week and I was 11
weeks pregnant and they did a nuchal translucency and blood screeen to
give me my risk for downs syndrom. I was not expecting to be at a
high risk but my test came back high risk and I'm scared and my
anxiety is going thru the roof.

Of course you're anxious. That's an awful thing to hear.

Did your doctor's office give you any literature on the testing? I
don't have any experience with the early screen; but When
I did the AFP4 (later on in my pregnancy than you are), I got a
pamphlet that included, among other things, the false-positive rate.
(The Genzyme literature says that 1 or 2 in 70 women who show an
elevated Down syndrome risk will actually have a Down syndrome baby.)
I would think your doctor's office ought to have those numbers for
the early screen. They won't tell you that your baby is OK; but they
might at least ease your anxiety a bit.

FWIW, when I had the AFP4 it showed I had an elevated risk for Down
syndrome - 1/51. My daughter is fine.

Liz & Emily (5/25/04)
--

"No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and
spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable - and we believe they
can do it again." -- John F. Kennedy, 6/10/1963

Wanda wrote:

Hi this is my first message on the site. I am 34 yrs old and pregnant
with my 4th child. I went for a ultrasound last week and I was 11
weeks pregnant and they did a nuchal translucency and blood screeen to
give me my risk for downs syndrom. I was not expecting to be at a
high risk but my test came back high risk and I'm scared and my
anxiety is going thru the roof. I have to wait until Aug, 25th for a
amino. then two weeks for the results. My nuchal thikness was 2.8 mm
has anyone else had this situation? Its hard to enjoy my pregnancy at
this point.

Try to relax. At 34, your age based risk of your
baby having DS is 1/465. That means you have a 99.8 percent
chance of having a healthy baby. If the results of your
nuchal translucency show that your risk is any higher
than 1/465, your screen will be "positive." So even if
your screen showed that you had a 99.5 percent chance of
having a healthy baby, it would still come back showing
elevated risk simply because it was higher than what would
be expected by age alone. That still leaves you with a
*very* high likelihood of having a healthy baby.
In addition, the thickness they found is near
the cutoff used in many studies. In some cases, the
cutoff is higher than that, meaning that you wouldn't
have been diagnosed as being at additional risk in those
studies. Your nuchal thickness is not way out of line.
Finally, the nuchal translucency test has about
a 5 percent false positive rate. That means that 5 percent
of women with a perfectly healthy baby will get a "screen
positive." Look at it this way--your odds of being one of
the 5 percent of women getting a false positive are way
higher than your odds of having a baby with DS.
Ask your doctor what the adjusted risk is based
on your results. If he or she says they're 1/425, well,
you can probably relax (and even if not, just remember
that false positive rate).
Anyway, the bottom line is that you are still
*very* likely to have a healthy baby. The odds of that
are much, much higher than anything else.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

*Wanda wrote:
*
* Hi this is my first message on the site. I am 34 yrs old and pregnant
* with my 4th child. I went for a ultrasound last week and I was 11
* weeks pregnant and they did a nuchal translucency and blood screeen to
* give me my risk for downs syndrom. I was not expecting to be at a
* high risk but my test came back high risk and I'm scared and my
* anxiety is going thru the roof. I have to wait until Aug, 25th for a
* amino. then two weeks for the results. My nuchal thikness was 2.8 mm
* has anyone else had this situation? Its hard to enjoy my pregnancy at
* this point.
*
* Try to relax. At 34, your age based risk of your
*baby having DS is 1/465. That means you have a 99.8 percent
*chance of having a healthy baby. If the results of your
*nuchal translucency show that your risk is any higher
*than 1/465, your screen will be "positive." So even if

Actually, I just had this done, and they told me my age related risk was
1/465 (I'm 34) and that anything over 1/462 was screened as "positive!"


--
hillary israeli vmd http://www.hillary.net
"uber vaccae in quattuor partes divisum est."
not-so-newly minted veterinarian-at-large

"Wanda" wrote in message
om...
Hi this is my first message on the site. I am 34 yrs old and pregnant
with my 4th child. I went for a ultrasound last week and I was 11
weeks pregnant and they did a nuchal translucency and blood screeen to
give me my risk for downs syndrom. I was not expecting to be at a
high risk but my test came back high risk and I'm scared and my
anxiety is going thru the roof. I have to wait until Aug, 25th for a
amino. then two weeks for the results. My nuchal thikness was 2.8 mm
has anyone else had this situation? Its hard to enjoy my pregnancy at
this point.

Well, I'm sure you went into this educated. The nuchal translucency is just
an educated guess, it can't tell you anything
for CERTAIN. So I suspect you had it done for the same reason we just had
ours done, if it came back with
results indicating higher than normal chances, then you'd go for the amnio.
So just keep in mind until you get
your amnio, you know nothing for certain and it's only a few weeks away.
There's absolutely nothing you
can do about it in the meantime. It's my understanding that the expected
result should be between 1 and 2mm,
so who knows if 2.8 is way outside the norm. My 37 year old wife went in
expecting the worse, we came back
with results of 1/1551 of having a DS baby, now she's worried that the test
could be wrong :P. So, damned if
you do, damned if you don't.

In message , Ericka Kammerer
writes

snip
Anyway, the bottom line is that you are still
*very* likely to have a healthy baby. The odds of that
are much, much higher than anything else.

I totally agree with what you said, but would like to add one final
point.

A baby with Down's isn't an 'unhealthy' baby, and isn't necessarily a
disaster. If you are one of the very small percentage of women who does
end up with a Down's baby, it wouldn't be what you wanted or expected
and you'd have adjusting to do, but that doesn't mean it would be the
end of the world. Of course, you might well decide after considering it
that you couldn't go ahead with the pregnancy - but, if it does come to
that, do find out as much as you can from mothers of Down's children
rather than just assuming that this is something so terrible you have to
have an abortion. That's a mistake many women make and regret.

But, as Ericka said, it's highly unlikely that you'll even have to make
that decision.


All the best,

Sarah

--
"I once requested an urgent admission for a homeopath who had become depressed
and taken a massive underdose" - Phil Peverley

"Sarah Vaughan" wrote in message
...
In message , Ericka Kammerer
writes

snip
Anyway, the bottom line is that you are still
*very* likely to have a healthy baby. The odds of that
are much, much higher than anything else.

I totally agree with what you said, but would like to add one final
point.

A baby with Down's isn't an 'unhealthy' baby, and isn't necessarily a
disaster. If you are one of the very small percentage of women who does
end up with a Down's baby, it wouldn't be what you wanted or expected
and you'd have adjusting to do, but that doesn't mean it would be the
end of the world. Of course, you might well decide after considering it
that you couldn't go ahead with the pregnancy - but, if it does come to
that, do find out as much as you can from mothers of Down's children
rather than just assuming that this is something so terrible you have to
have an abortion. That's a mistake many women make and regret.

But, as Ericka said, it's highly unlikely that you'll even have to make
that decision.

All the best,

Sarah

There's a wonderful essay about what it's to have a child with a disability.
The author is Emily Perl Kingsley and she has been one of the writers for
Sesame Street since her own child with Down syndrome was young. He was
featured in some of the segments from the 70s.

http://www.nas.com/downsyn/holland.html

There are so many things that can't be screened for prenatally that will
cause much greater heartache than having a child with Down syndrome.
Parenthood isn't for sissies.

Leigh in raLeigh
(mom to Claudia 5yo who has Down syndrome
and her twin brother Edward
as well as their 9yo older brother Aaron)