Fetal heart rate, umbilical artery pulsatility index, end-diastolic flow, nuchal translucency thickness and placental thickness were recorded in 250 women with a viable singleton pregnancy undergoing chorionic villous sampling for fetal karyotyping at 11-14 weeks of gestation. The fetal karyotype was normal in 210 cases and abnormal in 40, including 21 with trisomy 21, 13 with trisomy 18, three...

BACKGROUND First trimester increased fetal nuchal translucency is associated with fetal aneuploidies. One of the mechanisms of pathophysiology could be an abnormal extracellular matrix facilitating the formation of an interstitial edema. A previous study investigating interstitial edema in first trimester fetuses found large amounts of hyaluronan in the skin of fetuses with trisomy 21. The aim ...

OBJECTIVE To compare the effectiveness of different screening policies for the antenatal detection of Down's syndrome. DESIGN Retrospective six year survey. SETTING Maternity units of eight districts. PARTICIPANTS Women who completed their pregnancies between 1 January 1994 and 31 December 1999 (155 501 deliveries). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Cases of Down's syndrome identified before 24 wee...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the performance of the locally developed universal Down syndrome screening programme. DESIGN Population-based cohort study in the period July 2010 to June 2011 inclusive. SETTING Four Hong Kong Hospital Authority Departments of Obstetrics and Gynaecology and a central university-based laboratory for maternal serum processing and risk determination. PARTICIPANTS Women...

There is extensive evidence that effective screening for major chromosomal abnormalities can be provided in the first trimester of pregnancy. Prospective studies in a total of 200,868 pregnancies, including 871 fetuses with trisomy 21, have demonstrated that increased nuchal translucency can identify 76.8% of fetuses with trisomy 21, which represents a false-positive rate of 4.2%. When fetal nu...

OBJECTIVE To assess whether extremes in nuchal translucency (NT) thickness measurements at 11-14 weeks of gestation are preceded by departures from normal in early ultrasound biometry or embryonic heart rate in euploid fetuses. METHODS This was a retrospective analysis of data from women with singleton pregnancies examined in early pregnancy between June 2002 and January 2003, who subsequentl...