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Down’s syndrome screening at 11–14 weeks' gestation using prenasal thickness and nasal bone length

  • Maternal-Fetal Medicine
  • Published:
Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

To perform a multicenter prospective study of ultrasound prenasal thickness (PT), and nasal bone length (NBL) measurement at 11–14 weeks’ gestation.

Methods

Ultrasound PT and NBL determination was performed in 504 normal fetuses and 17 fetuses with Down's syndrome (DS). Measurements were made from mid-sagittal 2D images acquired using a standardized technique during nuchal translucency (NT) examination. PT and NBL values were expressed in multiples of the gestation-specific normal median (MoM) and as the PT/NBL ratio. Information on PT and NBL MoMs was also combined using logistic regression. Results were classified as positive according to whether they were greater than the normal 95th centile for PT, PT/NBL and the DS risk from logistic regression equation or below the 5th centile for NBL.

Results

The median value in DS cases and unaffected controls were: PT 1.26 and 0.996 MoM; and NBL 0.596 and 0.993 MoM. The proportion of DS fetuses with positive results was 41% for PT, 65% for NBL, and 82% for both the PT/NBL ratio and DS risk from the logistic regression equation. PT/NBL levels did not vary according to gestational age.

Conclusion

The PT/NBL ratio is a valuable first trimester DS screening marker that can be easily determined concomitant with the NT measurement.

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Funding

There was no funding for this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Prenatal Medicine and Gynecologic Ultrasound, University of Basel, Women’s Hospital, Spitalstrasse 21, 4031, Basel, Switzerland

    Gwendolin Manegold-Brauer

  2. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Institute of Ultrasound, Sackler School of Medicine, Assaf Harofeh Medical Centre, Beer Yakov 70300, Tzrifin, Israel

    Ron Maymon & Shimrit Shor

  3. Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Columbia University Medical Center, Columbia University, 622 West 168th Street, New York, NY, 10032, USA

    Howard Cuckle

  4. Department of Obstetrics and Prenatal Medicine, University of Bonn, Sigmund-Freud-Straße 25, 53127, Bonn, Germany

    Ulrich Gembruch & Annegret Geipel

Authors
  1. Gwendolin Manegold-Brauer
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  2. Ron Maymon
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  3. Shimrit Shor
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  4. Howard Cuckle
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  5. Ulrich Gembruch
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  6. Annegret Geipel
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Contributions

GMB: project development, data collection, data analysis, and manuscript writing. RM: data collection and manuscript writing/editing. SS: data collection. HC: data analysis and manuscript writing/editing. UG: project development and manuscript editing. AG: project development, data collection, data analysis and manuscript writing/editing.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gwendolin Manegold-Brauer.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The authors state that they had full control of all primary data and that they agree to allow the Journal to review their data if requested.

Ethical standards

Ethical approval for the study was granted by the Ethics Committee of Central- and Northwest-Switzerland (EKNZ, Basel, Switzerland), No. 2016-01414. Approval was additionally obtained the two other participating centers (center 1: No. 053/17, center 2: No. 136/16). According to local regulations, informed consent was not obtained and not required for this anonymized data analysis. Patients were not included if they explicitly refused further use of their anonymized data.

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Manegold-Brauer, G., Maymon, R., Shor, S. et al. Down’s syndrome screening at 11–14 weeks' gestation using prenasal thickness and nasal bone length. Arch Gynecol Obstet 299, 939–945 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-019-05083-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-019-05083-2

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