20 week scan - facts and figures please!

[lucy123]

Hi everyone. Another little pregnancy worry thread for you all. For anyone who doesn't know, I'm in Spain so NHS perks (?!) don't apply - especially,sadly, not NHS Direct. Also I'm not 100% sure they have a 20 week scan in the UK, but I'll just get on with the worry....

I've just had a phone call from the doctor's letting me know my appointment for my 20 week scan. It's at the end of sep, so I will in fact be 24 weeks (25 as far as my dates are concerned) gone.

I'm annoyed as I did ask for an appointment 2 weeks ago, but the locum told me not to worry yet. But that's another thing...

I'm not worried as such, but there is small section of my brain telling me that:

a) this scan is the one where they look for abnormalities.

b) at 24 weeks it'll be far too late to do anything about it.

As it goes, I wouldn't necessarily have a termination if they did find abnormalities, but I hate being stripped of my choice like this.

So have I got this right? Since I've had a negative triple test, what (roughly) are the stats on finding abnormailties at this scan? (I find statistics very reassuring! )Should I pay a large sum of money for a private scan?

from what I remember being told about ours they do the scan at around 20 weeks to look for abnormalities so that if any are spotted you can have further tests.... amnio etc. Not sure about the reason behind having the scan at 20 weeks - i think some places do do it later... at my hospital we were told the scan would be between 18 and 22 weeks so maybe its not that fixed. Theres some info on these links: www.preg.info/scans/
www.fetalcare.co.uk/Pages/detailedscanleaf.html
www.rcog.org.uk/mainpages.asp?PageID=439#20week
Hope this helps!

Not sure I really want to tell you a gloomy story but.....
I had a routine anomaly scan (Kings College, London) at 24weeks, and yes they found horrendous abnormalities. 12week scan was fine, (nuchal screen, blood test etc) low risk for everything.
Have written at length in the past of what we went through at the time so wont go into it again. But yes, there are options for termination if thats what you want, should the worst happen.

Lucy123: since you're in Spain, find out what the last legal date for termination is; it may be much later than the UK (which is 24 weeks, supposedly, but if you can get 2 doctors to sign off you can get termination much later).

What was the exact stat on your triple test? "Negative" just means that the odds were better than about 1/200. So, I would imagine the odds of them finding anything "wrong" in the scan is no larger than 1/200. Can you live with that?