Thank you for your letter and interest regarding the recent Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) Consult #36: prenatal aneuploidy screening using cell-free DNA (cfDNA).
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We wholeheartedly agree that clear and comprehensive information and education are needed regarding the implementation of these tests into clinical practice.We further agree that test accuracy is a metric of limited clinical value and that positive predictive value is the key to interpretation of post-test risk after cfDNA aneuploidy screening.
To assist providers in counseling their patients, the Perinatal Quality Foundation and the National Society for Genetic Counselors now provide access to an on-line positive predictive value calculator that is available for general use (https://www.perinatalquality.org/Vendors/NSGC/NIPT/).
We hope that such tools will help facilitate improved quality of care with enhanced patient and provider understanding of cfDNA aneuploidy screening performance.
Reference
- Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) Consult Series #36: prenatal aneuploidy screening using cell-free DNA.Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2015; 212: 711-716
Article Info
Publication History
Published online: August 14, 2015
Footnotes
All authors and Committee members have filled conflict of interest disclosure delineating personal, professional, and/or business interests that might be perceived as a real or potential conflict of interest in relation to this publication. Any conflicts have been resolved through a process approved by the SMFM Executive Board. The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine has neither solicited nor accepted any commercial involvement in the development of the content of this publication.
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Copyright
© 2015 Elsevier Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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- Prenatal aneuploidy screening using cell-free DNAAmerican Journal of Obstetrics & GynecologyVol. 213Issue 6
- PreviewWe sincerely thank the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine Publication Committee for its recent article that addressed noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT).1 The document provides invaluable information and guidance for practitioners. A concept that was not addressed was test accuracy, which is itself a discrete measure of screening test validity. Accuracy is particularly important with regard to NIPT because commercial laboratories that offer these tests often advertise them as “>99% accurate”2 but provide no further explanation of how this figure is derived or what it means.
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