Newborn Screening

Newborn screening tests take place before your newborn leaves the hospital. Babies are tested to identify serious or life-threatening conditions before symptoms begin. Such diseases are usually rare. However, they can affect a baby's normal physical and mental development.

Most tests use a few drops of blood from pricking the baby's heel. A hearing test involves placing a tiny earphone in the baby's ear and measuring his or her response to sound.

If a screening test suggests a problem, your baby's doctor will follow up with further testing. If those tests confirm a problem, the doctor may refer you to a specialist for treatment. Following your doctor's treatment plan can save your baby from lifelong health and developmental problems.

Newborn Screening on Wikipedia

'''Newborn screening''' is the process of testing newborn babies for treatable genetic disorder, endocrinology, inborn error of metabolism and hematology diseases. Robert Guthrie is given much of the credit for pioneering the earliest screening for phenylketonuria in the late 1960s using blood samples on filter paper obtained by pricking a newborn baby's heel on the second day of life to get a few drops of blood. There were few federally sponsored government health programs in the 1960s and each state, and each Canadian province devised their own programs. Congenital hypothyroidism was the second disease widely added in the 1970s. The development of tandem mass spectrometry screening by Edwin Naylor and others in the early 1990s led to a large expansion of potentially detectable congenital metabolic diseases that affect blood levels of organic acids. Additional tests have been added to many screening programs over the last two decades but screening programs vary from state to state and have become a subject of political controversy.

Disease qualification

Diseases are considered worth screening for if they meet the following criteria: # A simple and reasonably reliable test # A high enough frequency in the population to make it worthwhile # A treatment or intervention that makes a difference if the disease is detected early

Newborn screening in the United States

The following tests are mandated (required to be performed on every newborn born in the state) in most of the United States and Canada. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, approximately 3,000 babies with severe disorders are identified in the United States each year using newborn screening programs at current testing rates. States vary, and not all tests are required in every state, and a few states mandate more than this.