Prenatal testing : Check unborn baby is healthy or not

Pregnant women have the option of choosing both invasive and non-invasive prenatal testing during their gestation period. Non-invasive prenatal tests are preferable as they do not “invade” the woman’s body and are gentler. Particularly, non-invasive prenatal testing is safer than invasive procedures like Chorionic Villus Sampling (CVS) and amniocentesis, both of which raise the chances of miscarriage. Non-invasive prenatal tests can also find out the baby’s gender and Rh blood type.

Another example for prenatal testing, the nuchal translucency screening test, which is conducted in the first trimester of pregnancy. This prenatal Down syndrome test is a popular test that does an ultrasound examination of the fetus, a detection rate of 60-80%.

DNA-based prenatal non-invasive methods can be utilized to determine whether the unborn baby has a risk of carrying trisomies 13, 18 or 21 which are associated with a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, Edwards syndrome and Patau Syndrome.

A pregnant woman only needs to draw small sample of her blood with a syringe and needle and submit it to the lab. This sample is thoroughly tested and the cell-free fetal DNA analyzed for symptoms of a genetic disorder.