Women's experiences with second trimester prenatal diagnosis

Abstract

By means of questionnaires, 100 women were asked for their experiences concerning prenatal diagnosis. At four standardized stages of the pregnancy a questionnaire was filled in asking for: expectation, knowledge, attitude towards termination of the pregnancy in case of abnormal findings, reactions to the counselling and the obstetric treatment, interpretation of own risk, experiences since the normal test results were known and ideas to improve the treatment. With regard to the effect of pre-amniocentesis counseling it is concluded that the counselling had little impact on decision making; the counselling caused an increase of factual knowledge: somewhat more than half of the women who did not give a correct answer before counselling, indicated the right answer some time afterwards. Presumed differences in reaction patterns for a number of characteristics were not affirmed by the study; the reactions during the procedure of prenatal diagnosis seem to be highly individual and difficult to predict. In addition to the reaction of the 100 women described in this study, the responses to the first questionnaire of another 16 patients, declining amniocentesis after counselling, are presented.

The health-care experiences of families given the prenatal diagnosis of trisomy 18

“…[23][24][25][26] Leithner et al 24 reported that 42% of women given an abnormal prenatal diagnosis were dissatisfied with their physician's attitude. Further, our study found that a perceived lack of health-care provider's empathy was associated with overall dissatisfaction with care and was specifically cited as a contributing factor.…”

Psychological Distress and Amniocentesis

“…A recent study [6] suggested that postnatal ratings of depression may be associated with a high antenatal score on hostility. Amniocentesis does not seem to result in undue disruption of emotional and physical well-being during pregnancy: several retrospective studies [8][9][10][11][12] have reported that most women found the experience to be reassuring, would recommend it to others and would seek it again themselves with a subsequent pregnancy. Yet prenatal genetic studies may act as a predisposing factor for postpartum depression, and this issue should be explored by further research.…”

Psychological distress before and after prenatal invasive karyotyping

“…A similar decreasing trend with increasing time from the procedure is demonstrated in the present study (Table II). Verjaal and colleagues (11), found that 69% of the women were afraid that an AC would damage the fetus. Although our figures are lower than those previously reported, a substantial minority of women coming for invasive procedures are afraid that an invasive procedure may cause an injury to the fetus.…”