What are the items to be checked in early screening?

Early screening is newborn disease screening, which is a very important examination for newborns. We know that when a baby is just born, his body may be accompanied by certain genetic diseases or physical defects, which are definitely difficult to detect from the outside. In this case, early screening is needed, which involves the examination of many items. So, what items are checked in early screening? Let’s take a look below.

(2) Blood collection filter paper

Blood collection filter paper must be consistent with standard filter paper, which is a special pure cotton high-quality filter paper with fairly uniform texture, thickness, water absorption, and water permeability. The filter paper used by most neonatal disease screening centers is the internationally recognized Schleicher &

Schuell 903 special filter paper not only ensures the quality of screening, but also has comparability with international screening materials.

(3) Blood collection site and method

Choose the inside or outside of the baby's heel. The method is: massage or hot compress the baby's heel to make it congested, then disinfect it with alcohol and puncture it with a disposable blood collection needle, about 2 to 4 mm deep, discard the first drop of blood and drop the squeezed blood on a specific filter paper to allow it to fully penetrate to the back of the filter paper. It is required to collect 3 blood spots from each infant, and the diameter of each blood spot should be ≥10 mm.

(4) Storage and delivery of specimens: The blood filter paper should be dried in the shade at room temperature and delivered to the screening center within the specified time, or temporarily placed in a paper bag and stored in a refrigerator at 2-10℃.

(6) Screening methods

With the development of current experimental diagnostic technology, most domestic screening laboratories have adopted fluorescence analysis (fully quantitative) for PKU screening. A very small number still use the traditional Guthrie bacterial inhibition method (semi-quantitative). Some also use high-performance liquid chromatography for PKU screening. CH screening includes enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and enzyme immunofluorescence assay. In the past decade or so, developed countries have adopted tandem mass spectrometry technology to screen about 25 kinds of inherited metabolic defects, including amino acid, organic acid, and fatty acid metabolism disorders, greatly improving screening efficiency. Tandem mass spectrometry technology is the future development direction of neonatal disease screening.

To ensure the quality of testing, the testing will be carried out by dedicated personnel. For negative test results, the city and county management centers are generally not notified. For suspected positive cases, they will be re-examined. If they are still positive, they will be fed back to the city and county centers. The city and county centers must cooperate in the recall (or follow-up), re-examination and confirmation of positive cases.

(8) Case tracking: After the diagnosis, the child should be given long-term and correct drug treatment or diet control in time to ensure the social effect of newborn disease screening.