What tests should pregnant women do at 18 weeks?

Every pregnant woman is an important member of the family. Every period and every day of her life and diet are watched and worried by her family. In fact, pregnant women should do some proper exercise, which can also help with childbirth. We all know that pregnant women need to undergo many examinations from pregnancy to delivery. These examinations are also for the safe, healthy and smooth birth of the baby. So what examinations should pregnant women do at 18 weeks? Let’s take a look at it together!

1. Generally, an ultrasound is done around 40 days into the pregnancy to rule out ectopic pregnancy, and once every three months to see if the baby is developing normally, for example, whether there are any deformities. It should be done once every seven months to check the fetal position of the baby, for example, whether it is head position or hip position. Down syndrome screening needs to be done between sixteen and twenty weeks of pregnancy.

2. (1) In the early stages of pregnancy, a blood or urine pregnancy test is necessary to confirm pregnancy, or if there is vaginal bleeding, to determine whether the pregnancy is normal;

(2) After the pregnancy is confirmed to be normal, pregnant women who decide to undergo systematic prenatal examinations at local hospitals need to undergo the following: blood type, Rh factor, liver function, hepatitis B surface antigen, alpha-fetoprotein; serum cytomegalovirus, toxoplasma IgG and IgM antibodies;

(3) Pregnant women with other diseases need to undergo laboratory tests for the relevant diseases. For example, if they have hyperthyroidism, they need to undergo thyroid function tests;

4) Blood and urine routine tests are required during pregnancy, and hemoglobin should be checked at least 3 times during the entire pregnancy. After the initial urine routine test, urine routine tests are required at every prenatal checkup starting from the 30th week of pregnancy;

(5) At 28 weeks of gestation, every pregnant woman needs to undergo a screening test of blood sugar level one hour after taking 50g of glucose orally. If the result is ≥7.7mmol/L, a further test of 100g of glucose tolerance orally is required to further determine whether there is abnormality in glucose metabolism.

(6) Pregnant women who have not gone into labor naturally after more than 40 weeks of pregnancy need to undergo vaginal swab culture to determine whether there are pathogenic bacteria in the vagina and to prepare for induced labor.