Some 40 parents from West and East Flanders expecting a baby were told the wrong gender after a NIP test. The NIP test is a blood test performed at about three months of pregnancy to see if the baby has any abnormalities. The gender is then also established. Due to a technical malfunction at the lab in Ghent that performs the tests, parents were given the wrong gender.
The parents of 40 unborn babies in East and West Flanders were told the wrong sex following tests last month. Only after several weeks did the error come to light. A gynaecologist at AZ Groeninge Hospital in Kortrijk noticed the error. He clearly saw a boy on an ultrasound, while the mother had been told she was pregnant with a girl.
The doctor contacted the laboratory at AZ Maria Middelares Hospital in Ghent, which performs NIP tests for seven hospitals in the region. It turned out that there was a technical problem relating to the sex determination in a series of tests.
Technical malfunction
"The technical glitch occurred at the end of October on some 80 samples," says Catherine Zenner, spokesperson for AZ Maria Middelares. "As soon as an ultrasound showed that the gender was different from that indicated by the NIP test, our protocol kicked in. All samples were re-analysed according to the procedure and this showed that the sex determination was wrong, in about 40 samples.
"The doctors and parents concerned were contacted immediately, about three weeks after the original NIP test," she says. "We analyse 6,600 samples every year and this is the first time this has happened". "We always stress that the gender should be confirmed by ultrasound."
The Ghent hospital emphasises that the error only affected gender determination and there were no mistakes with any other parameters being tested.