December 18, 2018
With patient care always front of mind, the Harley Street Fertility Clinic is delighted to announce the introduction of a new point of care HCG pregnancy blood test.
This test not only gives an accurate result, but also takes away an element of the anxiety generally associated with the process, because the result is available in minutes, rather than hours.
Until now, patients have been asked to attend the Central London clinic for a pregnancy blood test to be carried out. Samples are then sent to the clinic’s laboratory and it generally takes around four hours for the results to come back to the team, who then communicate the information to the patient.
This new process involves a point of care pregnancy test using a drop of blood, and the patient is then given the results in a few minutes, rather than a few hours. While there is still a wait, this takes away a longer, nerve wracking wait for the patient and eases the stresses that aren’t helpful to anyone at such a key time.
Another plus for this new blood test, is that it is much more sensitive than the urine pregnancy tests that can be bought in any chemist or supermarket. The reason for this is down to the lower limit for HCG detection with the blood test is 10 IU/L, whereas for urine tests it is 25 IU/L or higher.
To give the very best service to our patients, if this point of care test is positive, we will then send the blood sample of to the lab for quantitative analysis as well.
Dr Suvir Venkataraman BEng (Hons), PhD, General Manager at Harley Street Fertility Clinic, comments, “We are constantly looking for ways that we can improve the services and quality of care we offer our patients and we believe that this test does exactly that. Fertility treatment can be extremely challenging and emotional and if we are able to take away hours of stressful waiting, at a time when patients actually need to feel as calm and relaxed as possible in the circumstances, we believe that is a good thing.
He adds, “This test might not take as long as more traditional options, but because it is so sensitive and advanced, it will give a very accurate result in minutes, rather than hours. This perfectly fits with our ethos of offering not only a professional medical service, but also a caring service that puts patient well-being across the board, first. We look forward to offering the new service to our patients and seeing many positive results for them”
For more information about this test, and all of the services on offer at the clinic, get in touch today and we would love to talk about how we could help you.
Harley Street Fertility Clinic
