WOMENS-HEALTH Messages for May, 1997: Re: negative pregnancy test

Re: negative pregnancy test

From: Noelle (anonymous@obgyn.net)
Sun, 11 May 1997 20:43:08 -0500 (CDT)

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At Fri, 9 May 1997, Joel wrote:

>I'm not used with US tests, but I understand you are using HOME tests.
>In France, these tests are known not to be very sensitive. So, I
>should have a blood pregnancy test. It's the only one you can be sure
>with.

My midwives and OBs have told me that the home urine tests manufactured nowadays (in the U.S. at least) are as reliable as the urine tests done in the office (approaching something like 99% accuracy if positive) -- often they are the same brands. False negatives are far more frequent than false positives.

They also told me that blood serum tests are useful for quantifying how much beta-hCG is in your blood (to help determine if a pregnancy is progressing properly early on) and that a blood serum test will pick up the beta-hCG about 4-5 days before a urine test would, home urine or office urine test. After several days, a urine test *should* register positive if beta-hCG is present in high enough amounts.

I have heard that some pregnancies NEVER show up as positive on urine or blood tests, though......does anyone know if this is true??

--
Noelle Haland
Mommy to Ethan Theodore, s/b 12/2/96 at 31 weeks
and "little bean" due 11/7/97

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