Hva er NIPT screening?
NIPT is short for Non Invasive Prenatal Test.
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It is a relatively new method where blood is sampled from the arm of the pregnant woman. In other words safe as you do not need sampling through the belly.
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The safety and accuracy of NIPT makes it the best prenatal screening method for chromosomal abnormalities that we have today.
Biological explanation
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When you are pregnant your blood contains DNA fragments from the fetus. With NIPT the fetal DNA is analysed for chromosomal abnormalities.
Fetal DNA flow into the maternal bloodstream.
Blood from the arm of the pregnant mother is DNA analyzed.
Things to remember
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Before taking NIPT you need to do a basic ultrasound. This ultrasund is not a diagnostic ultrasound, it is simply done to clarify the number of fetuses (NIPT is possibe in single and twin pregnancies).
When doing an ultrasound you can also get an approximate pregnancy week and compare it to the menses calculations so we know the dating of pregnancy week makes sense.
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You can then go forward with doing NIPT screening from pregnancy week 10+0.
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High Probability Results
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If the NIPT screening shows probability of chromosomal abnormality you need to do invasive diagnostics, chorionic villus sampling or amniotic fluid analysis, to verify the result.
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The reason you need to do invasive diagnostics if you get a High Probability result is the same as if you did any other type of prenatal screening, such as ultrasound. A screening test can have false positive results. The incidence of false positives varies primarily depending on chromosomal abnormality, age of parent and family history.
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Pros and Cons of NIPT
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The above mentioned False Positive Results is often mentioned as a negative thing regarding NIPT, and it is true that this is a negative aspect of all screening test, including NIPT. This being said NIPT is the best prenatal chromosomal screening test we have.
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If we compare to ultrasound (CUB; Combined Ultrasound and hormone Blood test), NIPT is more accurate. NIPT discovers more abnormalities at an early stage, and there are less false positives than with CUB.
As such NIPT is often offered AFTER an anomaly is suspected on ultrasound instead of invasive sampling to potentially rule out the suspected anomaly.
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What to think?
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We belive it is important that the involved parties, pregnant women/couple discuss the following:
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Do you want to do prenatal screening or not? Most children are born healthy so prenatal screening is not necessary!
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If you want to do prenatal screening, why do you want to do it?
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If you get an answer you did not want, what will you do with that information?
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If you choose to do prenatal chromosomal screening, NIPT is the best we have today.
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Therefore, for women/couples choosing to do prenatal screening we recommend NIPT in pregnancy week 10 and then follow up ultrasounds from week 15 onwards. This is in our view the best approach, NIPT is better at identifying abnormalities at an early stage, whilst anatomical abnormalities are more likely to be seen on ultrasound from approximately week 15 and onwards.
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It is your choice
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Prenatal screening is a personal choice, it is a screening you should understand so that you can make your own informed decision whether to pursue it or not.
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We advise you to go through our FAQ, here we shed light on most aspects of NIPT screening, both pros and cons and we go deeper into the details.
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Furthermore book a free consultation with us on the phone to discuss considerations you may have.