fetal fibronectin test

[kiki61872]

hi
does anyone have any experience with this test?
fetal fibronectin

due to pre-term labor i have been getting them all along and they always come back negative. from my understanding a negative is much more concrete than a positive result which isnt always accurate.
this past tuesday i had another test and it came back positive. i was told that i have a high risk of delivering in the next two weeks.

i guess my question is = for those that have had this test and got a positive result, did you actually deliver in the next two weeks?

[aidensmommy]

mine have all come back negative, but a friend of mine had a positive once...she didn't go into labor in 2 weeks, but rather 4 weeks later (she made it to 35 weeks).

best of luck to you, i know it can be scarry.

[ash313]

bump

[kiki61872]

well this is a scam.

i'm still here!

its been 2 weeks and nothing.

but i am making progress i guess. last week i was sent to L&D for contractions. I was just a smidge dialated and the baby was still up really high. went for a follow up on Friday - now i'm almost 2cm and 80% effaced. the baby is super low now too.

So who knows.

i have my weekly appt this friday so i'm curious to see where i am now.

as far as the FFN test- i think its a scam.

[MarriedaGoalie]

I had one done and mine came back negative, so I'm not really any help! Sorry, chica!

[SD601]

I had one done and it was positive.

I was having near pain-less contractions at 32 1/2 weeks, which dialated me to 3cm. I tested postive and my DS was born exactly 2 weeks later (water broke, induction, etc.)

However, I have read that it's not particularly accurate, especially if you have been intimate in the past 24 hours. So who knows?

[IrishEyes]

For a lot of tests like this one, the rate of false positives is pretty high, because they want the test to be super-sensitive. It's better to monitor you if there's a small chance of pre-term labor. The more the test is biased in this direction, the less likely they will have a high rate of false negatives (you test negative but actually are at risk for pre-term labor).

From the March of Dimes website:

A negative fFN test result is a highly reliable predictor that delivery will not occur within the next two weeks. A positive result is a less reliable predictor of preterm labor: there is still a fair chance that the pregnancy will continue for at least another two weeks.

Recommendations
The greatest value of the fFN test is the high level of reliability of a negative test result. A negative test result reassures medical providers and expectant parents that the risk of preterm delivery is currently low, and helps reduce the need for medical interventions. A positive fFN result, while less reliable, allows doctors and patients to take preventive measures to delay labor for as long as possible, by hospitalization and/or administering labor-suppressing (tocolytic) medications, but these interventions are not highly effective. Extra time may also allow for treatments such as giving corticosteroids to mothers, which can hasten fetal lung maturation and so improve the survival rates and outcome for premature infants.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) currently does not recommend the test for routine screening, as its use has not been shown to be clinically effective in predicting preterm labor in low-risk, asymptomatic pregnancies.

[la_bride_2004]

Mine was negative and my baby came exactly 2 weeks later (at 35 weeks!).