Audit: women's perception and knowledge of the 20 weeks anomaly scan

Abstract

We surveyed 385 women attending two maternity units for an anomaly scan at 20 weeks' gestation. Ninety-five per cent of the women thought that the purpose of the anomaly scan was to check for structural abnormalities in the fetus, indicating good knowledge. Most women thought the anomaly scan would pick up spinal, limb and kidney abnormalities. There was high expectation of what structural abnormalities the anomaly scan could pick up; 22% and 51% of the women thought the scan would pick up 61 – 70% and 71 – 100% of the structural abnormalities, respectively. Only 8% of the women thought, realistically, that the anomaly scan would pick up 50% of the abnormalities. The women's knowledge of soft markers was poor; 92% of them never heard of it. The main source of information about the anomaly scan was the hospital.