Interesting info on AMA designation
JFH2010
member
I saw a perinatal specialist today for a possible CVS, and he basically told me my doc was overreacting to my numbers and he talked me out of the CVS. Anyway, not the point - he said that the AMA lower limit was originally set based on where the risk of having a genetic abnormality was equal to the risk of m/c from invasive testing (which at the time was only amnio). Those two numbers converged right around 35, so that became the age limit. But he said that today, CVS/amnio techniques have gotten so much better that if they used the same standard, AMA would be set at 28. Obviously that would just be silly. I thought his point was interesting - the AMA designation was arbitrary to begin with and really doesn't have any biological meaning.
You've probably all thought about this already, as I have, but I didn't know that that's how it was originally determined.
Re: Interesting info on AMA designation
I didn't know that was how the designation came about. Thanks for the info.
It seems like a lot of people seem to thing that there is a magic transformation that happens on every woman's 35th birthday that instantly turns their eggs to dust.
Considering that I wanted to prison shank my OB as soon as she classified me as AMA at my first prenatal visit (I'm 36 and now 16 weeks pg with my first baby)... I find this very interesting and reassuring. So glad I popped by to read this today. Thanks for sharing!
That's interesting. Similarly, I FREAKED out when I found out I was unexpectedly expecting at age 41 (42 at delivery), assuming the worst because they put the fear of God in you if you're over 35, so 41 seemed older than dirt. I did some research and confirmed with my doctor that my risk for Downs is 2%.
2%!!!??? What on earth do we freak out about in other realms of life when we're told that the risk of something bad happening is a mere 2%? That doesn't seem worthy of freaking out about, no?
So I now think the whole AMA thing is a bunch of bunk.