#quad test

01/10/15 - 17W3D

Well I think The Wife is finally coming round to the idea that everything is probably OK, as the consultation yesterday at the FMC went quite well.

We initially had a conversation with one of the consultants and his face was a picture when we told him that the Quad result had come back as 1:2. He couldn't believe it, and he understood our concerns. He went through our paperwork and did his best to allay our fears telling us the same that we had heard previously from those we'd also spoken to about this problem.

However, he explained to us the importance of fetal fraction in the harmony test and how this can have a significant bearing on the results. No one had told us this information before. The higher the level of fetal fraction in the sample the more accurate the results, and anything more than ten percent means the accuracy of the Harmony test is 100%. Ours had been 12.5%.

While we waited for Professor to turn up (he's a busy guy) he then did another scan, which we weren't going to turn down, I love seeing the little thing wriggle and squirm in the womb. He took lots of measurements again and afterwards said that he was pretty confident that nothing was wrong and he told us that Professor Nicolaides would say the same thing: ignore the Quad test, there's no need for an amnio.

And that's what he did. After looking through our notes and discussing the scan results with his colleague he have the same verdict, ignore the Quad test. When he noticed that we had a scientific background he understood why we were probably over-analytical and probably a little bit neurotic!

He did say that if we still weren't comfortable then he would wait until thirty three weeks and then do an amnio at this point. Even with the risk of miscarriage at this point it is more likely that the baby would be survived, and could be delivered viable at this point.

We’re off to the Fetal Medicine Centre this afternoon to discuss the Harmony/Quad conflict. This is the last conversation that we’ll be having with a specialist before ultimately deciding what to do, have the amniocentesis or do without it.

I am still mostly against having the amnio but The Wife is still unsure. All the people we’ve spoken to have told us to trust the Harmony results. It showed low risk and the scans appear to back that up.

However, in our last consultation The Wife asked if any Downs babies are born having had no indicators in the scans and we couldn’t be given an answer. This wasn’t reassuring enough for her, hence her still sitting on the fence and unable to make that decision.

25/09/15 - 16W4D

So obviously this week has been spent mostly thinking about the test results we got last week and despairing at how different they were to the previous ones. We’ve had multiple phone calls with consultants, nurses and doctors and while they are mostly saying “ignore the quad test, you’ve had the harmony test done and that’s more reliable” the seed of doubt is still in our minds.

The Wife had a scan over at Harley Street on Wednesday with a colleague of Dr Friend and she looked at a number of individual markers to see if there was anything that would indicate that something was out of the ordinary. According to her, the size and development of those particular bones and organs looked to be normal.

Then last night we had an appointment with the consultant at our hospital, with whom I had already had a couple of conversations with this last week, so that he could go over our harmony test results in more details, discuss our options and do another scan. After talking for about half an hour he told us that it was not worth repeating either of the harmony or quad tests because what would we do with the results if it came back high risk again? The only way to know for certain is to do an amniocentesis, but there are risks involved with this, the highest being miscarriage.

The Wife was then scanned thoroughly again by the consultant's team and a lot of measurements were taken, just as had been done a few weeks ago. When the consultant came back and looked through the results and also ran the ultrasound over The Wife again he seemed to be happy that everything looked ok. His parting comment was not to worry, nothing was standing out to indicate that there was a Down's defect. He wouldn't recommend an amnio based on what he'd seen but the choice was entirely up to us.

However he did agree to monitor us a little more closely in the coming weeks, ensuring that he would be doing our 20-21 week scan which we booked in with him.

17/09/15 - 15W3D

The Wife had a phone call from the hospital this morning and it sent us into a bit of a panic.

The results have come back from the quad test we had done last week and it wasn’t good. Apparently the risk was calculated at 1:2. This is a lot higher than the results from the harmony test we had done at ten weeks.

They wanted her to go in today (quick, drop everything!) to have a blood test done so that they could carry out the Harmony test. So she had to come clean with them and tell them that we had one done last month and the results from that showed that we were in the low risk category then. The nurse told The Wife that she would have to go and speak to someone in the unit to find out what to do next then now knowing we’d had the Harmony test done.

The Wife called me to let me know and she is now going to try and get hold of the FMC and also to a doctor friend (who is a fertility doctor) to get their opinions.