Home Pregnancy Test Accuracy - How accurate it is

All the pregnancy kit advertises that they give 99% accuracy. You might miss the fine print on the box that says something about the pregnancy hormone and how it differs from woman to woman. It is easy to understand about the pregnancy test accuracy and every woman should understand that.

Almost all the pregnancy tests are accurate unless something happens with the tests. All the home pregnancy tests are made similar and the home pregnancy test accuracy of each test might vary slightly. Some of the kits might detect even the slightest hcG present and some might not detect this.

Knowing the pregnancy test accuracy

The pregnancy test accuracy depends on the type of home pregnancy kit that is used for testing the pregnancy. The products that are available in the market to detect pregnancy can detect levels of hCG present. This level of detection could vary with the pregnancy kit used. Some of the kits I the market are not designed to detect levels that are less than 100 mIU. Some of the lowest level detection are done up to 25 mIU. However there are products that can detect the lowest hormone level of up to 6.5 mIU.

You should know that not all the products tell about the sensitivity level that they can detect. Only a few products would advertise the levels. If you want this information you can find it in the internet for all the products available in the market. Some of the brands in the market have different products that have different sensitivity level.

Understanding the Sensitivity Ratings

One of the Wal-Mart’s brand of home pregnancy kit is the Equate home pregnancy kit. This kit come with two differnet detection levels. One of the kit can detect hCG levels up to 25 mIU and the other kit can detect only hCG levels above 100 mIU. If you want the sensitive one you can go for the 25 mIU kit.

There are chances for misunderstanding the pregnancy test accuracy. It is possible that you might a negative result while using one kit. Then you might try the other brand the next day and you might get the result as positive. This doesn’t mean that the first kit was not good. It is the time lag that made the result positive and not the kit. During the first test the level of hCG might have been low enough that it is not detected by the pregnancy kit.

hCG the pregnancy hormone is produced only after the placenta is attached to the uterine. This might happen at different time for different women. It is not possible to predict when that would happen. Until then no pregnancy test can detect the hCG level. The pregnancy test accuracy studies conducted reveal this. The time at which the pregnancy test is taken is responsible for the pregnancy test accuracy.

Technorati Tags: Pregnancy, Test Accuracy