More Information on smear test for dna fingerprinting/nuchal

Hi All,
Just wanted to share some information that i obtained today that i believe is helpful to all thinking of this method of testing. After numerous phone calls to path labs, i finally found out which one was conducting the test. It is being done by gribbles pathology.The cytogenics dept is handling,things. I had to leave my details and then the lady who is in head of it gave me a call. This is done as a regular pap test performed by your gp during the 6th week of pregnancy. This test is able to detect chromosomal abnormalities as well as genetic testing,for birth defects.However as the test is still in the TRIAL phase they are relying for mothers participation to get the relevant statistics. So there is no charge. But the bad news is even after you have the test done they will not release the results to you until the trial is concluded, which will be early next year. So therefore useless if you were hoping to avoid amnio if it was warranted.if anyone wants the details for gribbles, i have it all, but it has certainly sunk my boat :fuming: . Just makes the whole process exclusively for the benefit of the trial. I don't understand with so many great results they are getting why we cant obtain our own personal results. Maybe its a liabililty issue.?? Hope this helps anyone else that was looking for info on this.

Pauline

Hey Polly...The most likely reason for not giving out results is because of the reliability of thoses results before they have aquired statistics. Until they can be sure the tests/results are acurate they risk giving the mother a false positive or false negative...and that wouldn't be very nice...If they told you everything was ok, or vise versa, during their trial phase and it worked out that they got it wrong...wouldn't you sue...plenty would.
I still think it's great that you are a part of the trial...for the only way we can help future mothers is by people like you giving up their time for technological advancement, so well done! ;)

I had my first OB appt the other day and asked him about this. He said it will be years away. Could be as long as 5, before it's offered as a routine test.
A bit of an annoyance about not being able to find out the results until after the trial, but what can you do? Are you going to participate anyway?