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Patients’ Knowledge of Prenatal Screening for Trisomy 21

  • Original Research
  • Published:
Journal of Genetic Counseling

Abstract

This study's objective was to assess the knowledge of prenatal screening for Trisomy 21 in pregnant women in one institution in Canada. A cross-sectional survey measuring demographics, knowledge of screening, and health literacy, was administered to pregnant women. Of the 135 women who completed the survey, 74% had adequate knowledge of Trisomy 21 and associated screening procedures. Twenty-eight point one percent of women did not receive any counseling. Overall, 29.5% of women did not know that the screening test was optional and 10.2% of women underwent screening prior to having been counseled. Multigravidity (p < 0.05) and prior counseling (p < 0.001) were positively correlated with knowledge while first language other than English (p < 0.001) was negatively correlated with knowledge. Given these findings, an effort needs to be made on the part of health care providers to increase counseling rates to 100%, stressing the optional nature of the test to attain true informed consent.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Generalist Division, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Mount Sinai Hospital and the University of Toronto, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology for summer students to finish study recruitment. The funders had no involvement in the study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; or decision to submit the article for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, 1 King’s College Circle, Toronto, ON, M5S 1A8, Canada

    Michal Sheinis & Kira Bensimon

  2. Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, Mount Sinai Hospital, 600 University Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5G 1X5, Canada

    Michal Sheinis & Amanda Selk

  3. Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, University of Toronto, 123 Edward Street, Suite 1200, Toronto, ON, M5G 1E2, Canada

    Amanda Selk

  4. 700 University Avenue, 3rd floor, Toronto, ON, M5G 1Z5, Canada

    Amanda Selk

Authors
  1. Michal Sheinis
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  2. Kira Bensimon
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  3. Amanda Selk
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Correspondence to Amanda Selk.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Generalist Division, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Mount Sinai Hospital and the University of Toronto, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology for summer students to finish study recruitment. The funders had no involvement in the study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; or decision to submit the article for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

This study received research ethics board approval from Mount Sinai Hospital (14–0312-E).

Informed Consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000 (5). Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Sheinis, M., Bensimon, K. & Selk, A. Patients’ Knowledge of Prenatal Screening for Trisomy 21. J Genet Counsel 27, 95–103 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10897-017-0126-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10897-017-0126-3

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