PRENATAL DIAGNOSIS OF NEURAL TUBE DEFECTS

S G Gupta1, H Singh2

  • 1Medical Officer (Radiodiagnosis), Command Hospital (Southern Command) Pune - 411 040.

14 cases of neural tube defect (NTD) were detected on screening of 1950 pregnant women over a period of 30 months by antenatal ultrasonography (USG) examination, suggesting an incidence of 7.1 per thousand conceptions. The distribution of types of NTD were occult dysraphism 14%, meningocele 14%, myelocele 7%, myelomeningocele 14%, encephalocele 14% and anencephaly 37%. The study established high accuracy of USG screening for antenatal diagnosis of NTD with sensitivity of 85.71% and specificity of 100.