Communicating risk in prenatal screening: the consequences of Bayesian misapprehension

Frontiers in Psychology

Gorka Navarrete¹ 

关键词: Bayesian reasoning;    prenatal screening;    health policies;    risk communication;    massive screening;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01272

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

At some point during pregnancy women are typically encouraged to undergo a screening test in order to estimate the likelihood of fetal chromosomal aberrations. While timelines vary, the majority of pregnant women are screened within their first trimester (De Graaf et al., 2002). In the event of a positive test result, an invasive diagnostic assessment is usually recommended, namely amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling (CVS). The combined test, widely considered to be the most feasible and effective screening procedure, involves an integrated assessment of: maternal age, fetal Nuchal Translucency (NT), maternal serum pregnancy-associated plasma protein A (PAPP-A), and free β human chorionic gonadotropin (β-hCG). This assay is most reliable when performed nearest to the 11th week of gestation (Malone et al., 2005), at which its detection rate and false positive rate for trisomy 21, in optimal conditions, are approximately 95 and 5%, respectively (Nicolaides, 2004). A variety of competing screening techniques are available in the first trimester, and though we focus on the combined test in our example below, the point raised in this article applies to each of them.

【 授权许可】

CC BY