A developing baby can't survive an ectopic pregnancy. Without treatment, the condition can be life-threatening for a woman. The information on this site should not be used as a substitute for professional medical care or advice. Contact a health care provider if you have questions about your health. Pregnancy Test. What is a pregnancy test? Other names: human chorionic gonadotropin test, HCG test.
What is it used for? A pregnancy test is used to find out whether you are pregnant. Why do I need a pregnancy test? Other common signs of pregnancy include: Swollen, tender breasts Fatigue Frequent urination Nausea and vomiting also called morning sickness Bloated feeling in the abdomen.
What happens during a pregnancy test? Your home test may include the following steps or similar steps: Do the test on your first urination of the morning. The test may be more accurate at this time, because morning urine usually has more HCG. Hold the dipstick in your urine stream for 5 to 10 seconds. For kits that include a collection cup, urinate into the cup, and insert the dipstick into the cup for 5 to 10 seconds.
After a few minutes, the dipstick will show your results. The time to results and the way the results are shown will vary between test kit brands. Whether using a home pregnancy test that uses urine or a blood pregnancy test from your doctor, the results will be based on measurements of this hormone in your urine or blood. A pregnancy blood test is more sensitive than a urine test and can offer more information.
Most blood tests can detect slightly lower amounts of hCG, which means they can tell if you're pregnant a few days earlier. Urine tests tend to require slightly more hCG to read positive, making false-negative results a bit more likely with urine tests, although the rates are quite low overall.
Urine tests are qualitative, meaning they either detect hCG in your blood, giving a positive reading, or they don't, which is a negative reading. You may also have a qualitative blood hCG test to measure hCG in your blood. Again, the results are very clear: yes, you are pregnant because we found hCG in your blood or, no, you are not pregnant because we didn't find it.
Urine pregnancy tests can usually detect pregnancy by about 10 days after conception. Blood pregnancy tests can pick up hCG in the blood six to eight days past ovulation. It's recommended to wait a week or at least a few days after a missed period before taking a urine pregnancy test for optimal efficacy. Another option is getting a quantitative hCG blood test also called the beta hCG test.
These tests can give your doctor or midwife more information than just whether or not you're pregnant. Quantitative hCG tests can pick up even tiny amounts of the hormone and measure exactly how much hCG is in your blood.
This information can be compared over time. By having multiple blood tests about 48 hours apart, your doctor can track your hCG levels to get a better read on your pregnancy, if needed. Due to stress, expense, and other factors, these tests are not done routinely or needed for every pregnant woman. If your specific circumstances don't warrant a blood test, you should be able to rely on the results of your home pregnancy tests HPT instead. In routine pregnancies with healthy women, at-home urine tests are more than sufficient and effective.
Blood tests are primarily used in doctors' offices, specifically, if there is a potential issue with the pregnancy or some other complicating factor such as multiples , in which the greater sensitivity of the blood test is needed.
Blood tests may be ordered for higher risk pregnancies, during fertility treatments, when urine tests read negative but a period hasn't come, to confirm or rule out a possible miscarriage or multiples, and to diagnose a potential ectopic or tubal pregnancy, as well as due to other pregnancy complications.
Urine tests are low-cost, painless, easy-to-use, can be done in the privacy of one's home, and are very accurate in most scenarios , which is why they are the standard test used for most pregnancies.
A blood pregnancy test is warranted due to complicating factors. These tests are also very accurate, providing quick results that can give doctors more detailed information about your pregnancy. Normal results from a quantitative hCG blood pregnancy test would show that hCG levels are rising rapidly during the first trimester of pregnancy and then declining slightly after around 10 weeks.
At around 16 weeks, the hCG levels stabilize for the remainder of the pregnancy. Abnormal results, on the other hand, can mean a variety of things. To perform a blood pregnancy test, the doctor draws blood from a vein in your arm. This blood is sent to a laboratory for testing.
The results of most blood pregnancy tests take at least a couple of days. The laboratory then advises the doctor of the result. Blood test results are about 99 per cent accurate and can detect lower amounts of hCG than urine pregnancy tests. The two main types of blood pregnancy test include:.
The doctor can give you a urine pregnancy test. You are asked to urinate into a plastic cup or something similar. The doctor then tests the urine using a kit that may look similar to a home pregnancy test kit.
Home pregnancy test kits are available from pharmacists. However, many women who use home pregnancy test kits get inaccurate results. The most common mistake is to test for pregnancy too soon after the missed period. Home pregnancy test kits vary in their sensitivity to hCG. Most test kits are best used about one to two weeks after your period was due.
Generally speaking, most home pregnancy tests follow the same basic principles:. Common causes of false-positive results include:. Sometimes, a woman may be pregnant but the home test kit gives a negative result.
Common causes of false-negative results include:. Pregnancy tests taken by your doctor are rarely inaccurate. The occasional error is usually due to mistakes made in the laboratory. However, you can be reassured that the pregnancy test taken by your doctor is much more likely to be accurate than a home test you perform yourself.
In this test, there are antibodies present on the strip which become sensitive if the hCG hormone is present in the urine sample. We also preform blood pregnancy tests in our clinic.
This is done by one of our trained medical staff members drawing a small amount of your blood via venipuncture. What to expect during the blood draw? Well, no one looks forward to getting their blood drawn, however, this procedure is usually brief and uneventful without complications. Most people are through with the entire procedure in under 15 minutes. The procedure begins by the phlebotomist gently pressing his or her fingers against your skin to locate the best and most accessible vein.
Then she will put on gloves, and clean the skin area with an alcohol pad.
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