Soft marker
The term soft marker ( Engl. : Soft = light, mild + mark = mark) is in the prenatal diagnosis used and refers to those features, the antenatal ( prenatal ) detecting a statistically slight increase in the likelihood of being a chromosome specificity and / or physical malformations and / or certain diseases in the unborn baby .
A distinction is made between:
- Sonographic soft markers (soft markers that can in principle be determined or excluded by ultrasound )
- Serological soft markers (soft markers that can in principle be determined or excluded by examining the blood or serum of the pregnant woman)
The detection or exclusion of certain soft markers does not allow a diagnosis of chromosomal peculiarities. This requires invasive examinations such as chorionic villus sampling , amniocentesis or umbilical cord puncture and the chromosome analysis that follows these examinations .
