My midwife just called with the results of the nuchal translucency scan, which I talked about in my last post.  The results are based on the outcome of the scan coupled with the age of the mother (that's me).

The results tell the midwife what chance the baby has of the chromosomal abnormality "trisomy 21", commonly known as Down Syndrome. 

If the results show that the baby has more than a 1 in 300 chance of having trisomy 21, an amniocentesis is usually recommended to find out for sure. 

Anyway, based solely on my age, the risk of the baby having trisomy 21 was 1 in 120.  But after the results of the scan were added to the equation, the risk was lowered to 1 in 642.

That was a very good result and the midwife was overjoyed.  So was I, but I felt all along that everything was going to be OK.



For more information on trisomy 21 and Down Syndrome, this is a good site from the University of Virginia:
http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/UVAHealth/peds_genetics /downs.cfm