While countless of parents rely on prenatal testing to ensure the health of their unborn baby, a new report by the New England Center for Investigative Reporting warns that the tests aren't as accurate as they claim. As a result, many moms to be are getting false negative results and end up aborting perfectly healthy babies. The study claims that while many of the lab results guarantee accuracy of 99 percent, the prenatal tests could be wrong 50 percent of the time.
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The study specifically looks at prenatal tests that are noninvasive, which are also called cell-free DNA testing. The screening, conducted as early as nine weeks of pregnancy, looks at potential signs for any chromosomal disorders, like Down syndrome. Researchers found that many of these prenatal tests are coming up with inaccurate readings that point to the fetus having a disorder–when in fact they could be perfectly healthy. An estimate of about 500,000 to 800,000 women get tested per year. Currently, about 6 percent of women terminate their pregnancies based on the prenatal test results.
Athena Cherry, professor of pathology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, warns, "The worry is women are terminating without really knowing if [the initial test result] is true or not." Experts strongly advise pregnant moms to encourage more testing before making the final decision to abort. If abnormal results are found, the doctor should conduct further diagnostic testing to make sure the prenatal DNA results are accurate.
Parents Stacie and Lincoln Chapman shared their experience of receiving an inaccurate test result. They decided to continue with advanced DNA testing and found that the initial results were false. Now they're proud parents of a healthy baby boy.
Lincoln's advice is:
For other people that are going, potentially, through the same experience–my heart goes out to those people because if they're not getting education and they're not being warned and don't know the ins and outs of it they could make a poor decision.
The lesson? Take these prenatal tests with a grain of salt and make sure to encourage further testing before making a final decision. Listen to Stacie and Lincoln's story below.
Embedded content: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6tT207xLaU
Image via Thinkstock
