Combined Screening Blood tests

[Sickallday]

Hi. I appreciate this might be a wait and see but I am really interesting in other peoples experience.

I am currently 13 weeks pregnant and had my scan and bloods yesterday. Blood tests should be with me in a week if any issues and two weeks if none.

This is my second pregnancy my current child is 5 . I was 35 when I had him and the blood tests came back with really high risk for Edwards. We went ahead with the CVS and the results were absolutely fine. He is a happy healthy 5 year old. I found this process fairly traumatic although delighted the results were absolutely fine;

My question is. I am now 5 years older . Is it likely my results will come back high again ? Has anyone had extra testing first time round how was their second pregnancy results? I appreciate it’s a different pregnancy but I am just interested.

Thanks so much for anyone that replies in advance

My second pregnancy (42yo) turned out to be high risk. I had decided to have an amnio either way privately at 16 weeks with exome sequencing which is a very comprehensive genetic test that checks over 6000 genes. It came out all fine and I enjoyed the rest of my pregnancy. Should I have the luck to have a third child I would go straight into amniocentesis as the risks with the current techniques are so low that it was really such an easy experience. No pain and no issues after the procedure. I was given antibiotics 3 days before the procedure to prevent infection and I just rested for a couple of days afterwards. I have now an 11 months old. Good luck 🤞

Thank you! I’m totally not against the testing and will have it if needed just keen to work out if I’m likely to come up as high odds again if I did the first time .

Lovely to hear you have your 11 month old.

I’ve been told by numerous consultants that the probability to come up high at 40+ increases and my age determined a very high risk for Down syndrome despite the very thin nuchal fold, as my blood results were good. Now in my case I knew it could not have been possible as this was PGTA tested embryo. I decided to go for amniocentesis either way as for personal studies I know that genetics is way more complex than what it’s explained to the general
public and there are so many deletions, duplications and translocations that a simple combined test , harmony, prenatal safe test would not pick up. You could be low risk at all these tests but still have a genetic condition in the foetus. Hope it gives you more clarity. And as for the amniocentesis, a lot of people at the time put me off it when I was making the decision, but I went to a highly regarded centre in my home country where there is this famous consultant who does it routinely with excellent results. Happy to give you more information if you need to chat x

Your risks will be higher according to the testing algorithm they use, as age plays a big part in it. If you had a previous pregnancy affected by a chromosomal abnormality, this would also make your risk higher (I'm not sure if an incorrect high risk result would have the same impact though)

My first pregnancy ended in a TFMR after the baby was diagnosed with a trisomy, so my pre testing risk in my current pregnancy was quite high, higher than it would be for someone in my age bracket for instance, although the combined test showed i was low risk once they'd taken my bloods and done the scan (also a pgta tested embryo this time!)

Thank you so much for your response. Because it didn’t end up being any chromosomal issues I was just trying to work out if I should just prepare myself for having to go through the tests again. I guess it’s just a waiting game . I’m so sorry you had a TMFR .

That’s hard. I came back “high” risk although 1 in 145 so not massively high in reality.
we opted for NIPT as I was too worried about miscarriage from amino and cvs
it came back low which means 99.98% not any of the trisomies it tests for. We were happy with that as it’s 1 in 5000 risk now.

if you’d like to know my numbers I’d be happy to share xx

Thanks so much. It’s day 5 since my tests today and I’ve not heard anything. Hoping that’s a good sign

lets Hope so! Xx

i had my test on the Tuesday afternoon and they called back Monday lunchtime.
I’m guessing they do prioritise bad news!

I couldn’t bear the phone call so I let it go to voicemail - my phone does a kind of transcript of the voicemail that you can read like a text msg
In that she said nothing to worry about so that helped!

Hope it goes well and you hear soon xxx

Was yours ok?

Yes all was ok. Came back low chance which is much higher accuracy than the original result you get.
we were happy with that and not doing further testing xz

Pay for a private NIPT. It’s only one blood test and no faffing with a cvs.

If I’m low risk I don’t want further testing, I was just wondering what my odds were of coming up high risk as I had a false positive for high risk 5 years ago

I’m not clear what you mean but this is a different pregnancy so your last results should not be taken as any indication to your current results.

If you get an NIPT now you’ll have peace of mind within a week. They are very accurate.

remember last time wasn’t a false positive either as it’s a risk.
even if they said 1 in 3 then baby was fine, it just meant you were in the 2 in 3 without the condition!

Thank you everyone for replies. I got my letter today and I’ve come back low risk with really low odds. I know this is not a guarantee but we feel comfortable and I can’t tell you how pleased I am not to have to go through a CVS again