Pregnancy test

A modern hormone pregnancy test, showing a positive result
A series of pregnancy test strips, taken one per day at the beginning of a pregnancy

A pregnancy test is used to determine whether a female is pregnant or not. The two primary methods are testing for the female pregnancy hormone (human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG)) in blood or urine using a pregnancy test kit, and scanning with ultrasonography.[1] Testing blood for hCG results in the earliest detection of pregnancy.[2] Almost all pregnant women will have a positive urine pregnancy test one week after the first day of a missed menstrual period.[3]

  1. ^ Chard T (1992). "REVIEW: Pregnancy tests: a review". Human Reproduction. 7 (5): 701–710. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.humrep.a137722. ISSN 1460-2350. PMID 1639991.
  2. ^ Casanova R, Weiss PM, Chuang A, Goepfert AR, Hueppchen NA (April 2018). Beckmann and Ling's obstetrics and gynecology (8th ed.). Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer. ISBN 978-1-4963-5309-2. OCLC 949870151.
  3. ^ Bastian LA, Brown HL (November 2019). "Clinical manifestations and diagnosis of early pregnancy". UpToDate.