PROACTIVE PLANNING FOR A MORE INFORMED PREGNANCY
CARRIER SCREENING
Administered as a simple blood test, carrier screenings allow both partners to be tested for a variety of genetic diseases. People can be carriers of a genetic disease without having symptoms. Because of this, even without symptoms, if both parents are recessive carriers of the same condition, there is a good chance it could be passed to their baby.
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What happens if one or both of us is a carrier?
If one parent is a carrier for a genetic condition, your child could have a low risk of this disease. If both parents are a carrier for the same genetic condition, the risk is significantly higher. In both cases, we recommend preimplantation genetic testing (PGT) for your embryos, which would allow us to identify embryos without the disease to be transferred, resulting in a healthy, unaffected child.
While no carrier screening can test for all potential diseases, we do recommend our couples begin with this step and also inform us of any genetic conditions that exist in their families to ensure we are optimizing their treatment plan.
the importance of preimplantation genetic screening
Understanding our own unique biological landscape gives us the power to be proactive in our pregnancy planning, making more informed decisions and even identifying underlying genetic conditions that contribute to difficulties such as recurrent miscarriages.
Preimplantation Genetic Testing is an option for all of our patients pursuing parenthood, and is available only when undergoing IVF.