Reasons for Amniocentesis Testing

As a licensed registered nurse and certified inpatient obstetric nurse, Judith Abraham has accrued more than 30 years of experience working in Illinois and Wyoming hospitals. Former Wyoming professional Judith Abraham draws on an in-depth knowledge of perinatal assessment tools, including amniocentesis.

Amniocentesis is a prenatal procedure used to assess the health of the baby. Physicians will often use it to test for genetic conditions such as Down syndrome, particularly when the expectant mother has had positive screening test results or is at particularly high risk of giving birth to a child with a certain condition. 

In other cases, physicians utilize amniocentesis to test for infection or illness in the fetus. It is often used to detect diseases caused by a single gene defect, which doctors may identify through carrier screening or evaluation of the parents' family histories. The test may also serve as a way of evaluating anemia in babies with Rh sensitization, which causes the mother's immune system to act on the proteins of a fetus' blood cells.

Amniocentesis may also help a medical team to determine whether a baby's lungs have matured enough for birth. This is most common when the mother is at 32 to 39 weeks gestation and is at risk of non-emergent pregnancy complications. Before 32 weeks, the baby's lungs are unlikely to be strong enough to allow him or her to breathe outside of the womb.