Blood Drug Testing

pregnancy blood test - how does qualitative work?

The doc did a pg blood test today. She said there were 2 different blood test types. One will simply give a yes / no answer. The other will give you the amount of hcg (?) in your blood. Do all women have a small amount of this? Or ONLY when pregnant? So if there is any amount (even slight) would that mean pregnancy? Or only if it rose to a certain amount (magic numberr)? I don't remember this type of test with my first pg, thanks I heard women usually have .5 (?) of hcg and levels above that COULD indicate pregnancy....any truth to that? How soon after coneption do the levels start to rise??

Public Comments

1. hCG is only around while you're pregnant (or you just miscarried or gave birth- takes a little bit to get out of the system). The amount may be measured to help figure out how far along you are.
2. well in early pregnancy you dont have as much of the hcg hormone so one test tests the amount of hcg you have. i know if you have cancer, you can have small amounts of hcg.(not to scare you....sorry) but if they do the test, the number should double every few days to indicate a healthy pregnancy.
3. If there is any HCG present, it means pregnancy. HCG is only rarely present in women who are not pregnant, and usually it is because of some kind of serious illness, such as certain types of cancer, which can trick the body into producing HCG. This is so extremely rare that they never assume HCG is present because of any other reason other than pregnancy and would never consider cancer as an option unless after several weeks there is no evidence of an embryo/fetus. Most docs use the simple yes/no test - most of the time they reserve the qualitative measuring of the HCG levels if miscarriage is suspected, and they would have to draw blood multiple times to see if the levels rise or fall, because one level by itself cannot determine anything on it's own.
4. if your levels are 5 (10 for some dr's) or less you are not preg, anything over that amt then yes, you are preg. the further along you are the higher the # will be 3 weeks LMP: 5 - 50 mIU/ml 4 weeks LMP: 5 - 426 mIU/ml 5 weeks LMP: 18 - 7,340 mIU/ml 6 weeks LMP: 1,080 - 56,500 mIU/ml 7 - 8 weeks LMP: 7, 650 - 229,000 mIU/ml 9 - 12 weeks LMP: 25,700 - 288,000 mIU/ml 13 - 16 weeks LMP: 13,300 - 254,000 mIU/ml 17 - 24 weeks LMP: 4,060 - 165,400 mIU/ml 25 - 40 weeks LMP: 3,640 - 117,000 mIU/ml Non-pregnant females: <5.0 mIU/ml Postmenopausal females: <9.5 mIU/ml