Awareness of Czech women about prenatal screening for Down's syndrome and other congenital animalies
Abstract
The aim of this study was to investigate the awareness of Czech women about individual prenatal screening programmes for Down's syndrome and other types of congenital anomalies and inherited diseases. Our current practical experience points to the fact that pregnant womenoften have insufficient knowledge about prenatal screening programmes, which have varying sensitivity and false positivity.
There are still many pregnant women who do not know what kind of test or examination they are audergoing. This occurs in spite of vast amount of information available on the internet, provision of written information via specialised medical booklets, and verbal communication of obstetricians and gyneacologists with patients.
Additionally, results interpretation by doctors is often problematic. We investigated the whole situation using anonymous questionnaires.
Such questionnaires were distributed prior to prenatal screening tests, and consisted of a combination of open and closed questions. Results of this investigation confirmed our predictions.
In general, the knowledge of Czech women about prenatal screening is fairly good. However, answers often indicated patients' confusion about the prenatal screening tests in the first and second trimester of pragnancy, and about screening tests for chromosomal karyotyping, not to mention the potential of DNA analysis.
Another important finding of this study is the fact that a relatively large percentage of women did not undergo the combined first trimester screening test. Our results strongly advocate for increasing patients'awareness about screening tests.
Application of our findengs ic clinical practice should facilitate communication of health professionals with pregnant women and thus reduce their stress from screening tests.