At 41, what's the best nuchal scan result I can hope for?

[sarahs999]

I have my nuchal coming up in a couple of weeks and to say I'm stressed about it is an understatement. This is a much longed for second child; I have had 5 miscarriages over five years and in between every test and regime under the sun, diets, acupuncture, chinese medecine, Harley Street, St Mary's - everything. I've finally found the answer with Mr Shehata and natural killer cells - this is my first attempt at pregnancy under his regime and so far it's all gone swimmingly.

SO, nuchal. I am having mine on the NHS but if the results are ambiguous we will go to the fetal medecine centre to have a second (and more detailed) opinion. But I'm wondering. Using just bloods, maternal age and NT scan (which is what my hospital offers), what is the best I can hope for? Could it be better than 1/250? I just need to prepare myself really as I am utterly aghast at the thought of CVS or amnio - could not bear to lose a healthy baby after all I've been through. I've tried googling for how they calculate it but can't find anything very useful.

Hi Sarah, from what i know (and i could be wrong!) there is no specific upper limit. But anything that lowers your background risk is obviously a good sign, i think at 40 it's something like 1:100 so even 1:250 would be a really positive result.

I had my results through the other day and my background risk at 32 was something like 1:610 but this was adjusted to 1:12,000 via an NHS NT test so i guess they can improve quite considerably? I have had a 1:2 before so was very grateful to hear this.

Best of luck with your scan.

Hi Sarah

Congratulations on your pregnancy, and sorry to hear you are going through this stress.

I am 41 this month and have just been through the testing/cvs/amnio decision-making process.

After tests at 12 weeks, my risk was put at 1:112 - although this is considered 'good' compared to risk for age alone (1:85 for a 40 year old), I felt pretty devastated that it was not better (I think the label of 'high risk' doesn't help).

To answer your question - I think your risk could well be better than 1:250 as I have read about the experiences of plenty of 40something women who have had really good results. I think though that what is regarded as a 'risk' depends on the individual too, and also what you intend to do with the information from more definitive tests.

I got the all-clear, but this took a while as went for a cvs but was then advised to have an amnio instead due to position of placenta. This meant more waiting, but it did mean a lower-risk procedure. I got the provisional all-clear the following day (further, and more definite results are to follow soon). It certainly wasn't a worry-free process, but I got a lot of reassurance from the consultants and midwives at the hospital where the testing was done (there's a fair bit of discussion before they even think about going ahead with the test)

The worrying/decision making is very, very hard (even if everyone is reassuring you that the chances are that everything will be ok)

Sorry - I am not sure I have given you much information of any use, but I wish you all the best for your scan and tests, and please remember you have a very good chance of everything being ok.

Sorry to hear about your miscarriages.

I was a little bit younger than you but when I was pg with dd2 I was 39 and based on my age alone my risk was about 1 in 117. After the nuchal scan and blood tests the risk was given as 1 in 72000! I was amazed it could change so much.

Good luck with the rest of your pg :)

Thanks for your thoughts everyone. Sometimes I wish it was all like in the old days where no one got any scans and we were blissfully ignorant all the way through our pregnancies!

Just to update - my results including bloods turned out to be 1 in 460, whcih I'm very happy with and won't be havnig any further testing. Baby on the scan looked very good and active too, so I'm reassured. Thanks for all your responses.

Happy need,OP. After my blogs and scan my numbers came back at 1:30000. I am 41with my first. There's a new fetal blood test out that can give a definitive answer to reasoners just as CVs.you might ask about that

Stupid phone!news,bloods