Prenatal Sex Determination And Sensitivities

Unborn children's sex is a matter of curiosity among pregnant women. Ultrasound's advent into medicine, as well as its revolutionary changes in resolution and functionality, have enabled the assignment of a gender to the unborn child, thus alleviating the anxiety experienced by these women; however, ethical, psycho-social, moral, and legal dilemmas ensue.

NCBI conducted a study to determine whether prenatal sonography is accurate, to conduct binary classification tests, and to assess the impact of misdiagnosis on diagnosis.

Observations and Methods

Between August 2010 and October 2011, 205 consecutive pregnant women aged 20-40 years consented to a prospective prenatal sonographic sex determination study at a private hospital in Benin.

The group of women were asked to complete questionnaires before and after the scans, and their feelings regarding the sex of the fetuses were recorded.

Based on their case note and telephone, gender was determined by comparing the sex at birth with the scan. Discussions pertinent to the scan and later in the process were noted on the questionnaires. This binary classification test was conducted with SPSS version 17.

Results

There were high sensitivity (98.2%) and binary classification components of prenatal sex determination. The sensitivity to detect a female was higher than the sensitivity of detecting a male. Consequently, two males were misdiagnosed as females. It appears that most women were perfectly happy even when the sex was not what they wanted.

Conclusion

This method has a high sensitivity index for determining the sex of the foetus. We therefore encourage its use before invasive sex tests. Gender determination is done at a premier ultrasound studio located in Springfield with the highest level of care.

Since this gender determination test has a high sensitivity, it can be done by a trained sonographer, so the BabyEnvisions might be the great option.