While most women give birth to healthy babies, about 3-5% of babies have a major birth defect or mental retardation. In many cases, these birth defects result from a genetic or chromosomal disorder. When an abnormality is diagnosed, this information combined with expert genetic counseling can help to make important decisions about pregnancy.

The Center for Prenatal Diagnosis at St. Vincent Women's Hospital provides comprehens ive genetic counseling as well as screening and diagnostic testing. Our patients benefit from our expertise and advanced technology, including nuchal translucency (NT) screening which is a new, non-invasive test performed early in pregnancy to identify increased risk for Down syndrome and other birth defects.

Screening can provide important information about potential pregnancy risks such as birth defects. "Screening" involves no risk of miscarriage but isn't able to provided a definative answer the way diagnostic tests can.

Diagnostic tests are extremely accurate, but carry a risk of miscarriage. These tests include amniocentesis and chorionic villi sampling which have a greater than 99% accuracy for detecting some abnormalities.

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