Message of hope for mums with high nuchal scan result

[Cindarella78]

We would like to tell our story to help all of you who at this time are going through the terrible experience of being told that there may be problems with your baby's development following a nuchal scan. This happens when the height of the nuchal fluid is outside the norm.
At our 12-week scan our baby's nuchal measurement was measured to be 3.7 mm which in conjunction with the mother's age at birth (39) would result in a 1/4 chances of the baby being born with an abnormality
of some kind such as Down syndrome or other rare and pernicious genetic disorders or congenital problems of some kind.
Our wonderful little boy is over 3-month old and turned out to be perfectly fine!
Receiving such bad news is very distressing and at the time we felt hopeless and dejected and we prayed to God from the bottom of our hearts to help us and put it right.
The messages left on this forums and others addressing the same issue were very helpful and comforting to us and kept the hope alive. This is why we have decided that it would be worthwhile and helpful to others to write about our experience here.

I think that sonographers who carry out the scans and find out that a nuchal measurement is found to be
over the 'safe' level should refrain from giving diagnosis such as "..I'm afraid there is something wrong with your baby", as it happened to us.
They should limit themselves to state the outcome of the scan and that ONLY further investigation would tell IF something is wrong with the baby.

You must try to keep calm and remember that the nuchal scan is a screening test and its results only
give a probability of problems with the baby's development based on some previous available data.
The nuchal scan is not used to reach a diagnosis it is only an instrument used to decide when it is worth spending effort and money on further, more sophisticated investigations.

The nucal scan is entirely based on statistical data derived from a limited albeit fairly large sample of previously recorded nuchal scans. The measured value of the height of the nuchal fluid is used to correlate to the statistical probability of problems of some kind with the development of the baby.
It does not mean that the baby will be affected by any possible disease,
it merely indicates that it is probably worthwhile to proceed with other tests as something may be going on.
The screening employs the mother's age and the nuchal scan height as the two only entry points and averages
almost everything else thereby some case-specific parameters are neglected i.e. whether or not the mother is a smoker, overweight, physically fit, etc.
We decided to have the CVS test and the waiting was unbearable but luckily nothing was found to be out of the norm.

Do not lose all hope and try to maintain a rational outlook as most likely things will be all right for all of you.

A big hug and we wish you all the best.
Davide and Cinzia