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Antenatal testing 'should be earlier'Date: 04/10/2007 09:33:26
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Pregnant women are being encouraged to begin antenatal testing in their first trimester in order to receive the results as soon as possible, said Arc today.
Hoping to unearth problems earlier on and prevent pregnant women falling through the gaps in the stretched testing program, Arc advised that testing for both maternal and foetal complications should be carried out in the first trimester.
Antenatal tests check for conditions ranging from Anaemia, Hepatitis B and HIV in the mother to neural tube defects and Down's Syndrome in the child, with the detection of problems claimed to be particularly necessary for some ethnic minority groups.
Jane Fisher, director of Arc, said: "In order for (pregnant women) to know and make decisions there's a real importance of getting in there as quickly as possible.
"Some of the London hospitals have a higher ethnic minority population and there it's extra important because the tests for haemoglobinopathies (such as sickle cell anaemia and thalassemia) need to happen between eight and twelve weeks of pregnancy," she added.
Although some conditions differ in probability depending on the ethnic minority group, Ms Fisher claimed that foetal tests for Down's Syndrome were now universally offered, with spina bifida also always looked for in scans.
Arc asserted that in order to manage the pregnancy as well as possible and give women the requisite health advice, it was necessary to bring forward the testing process.
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