Pregnancy: Screening
(asked on 17th November 2014) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many women (a) accepted and (b) refused biochemical serum screening in 2012.
The NHS Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme (FASP) offers screening to all pregnant women in England to assess the risk of a baby being born with Down’s syndrome or a number of fetal anomalies (structural abnormalities with how the fetus has developed). The decision to have a screening test is always a personal choice.
The first scan usually takes place between 10 to 14 weeks and includes a blood test for Down’s syndrome, known as biochemical serum screening. FASP do not collect or collate data at a national level for the uptake of screening for Down’s syndrome.
The Down’s Syndrome Screening Quality Assurance Support Service (DQASS), commissioned by Public Health England, can provide data at a national level on the number of completed screening tests for Down’s syndrome. The data for 2012 and 2013 are presented in the following table.
Biochemical serum screening tests completed in 2012 and 2013
Year | First trimester tests | Second trimester tests | Integrated tests* | Total |
2012 | 455,995 | 100,371 | 3,796 | 560,162 |
2013 | 468,172 | 89,959 | 2,892 | 561,023 |
*Integrated tests are combined first and second trimester screening.