A new national survey suggests that most Americans are misinformed about miscarriages, holding a number of false beliefs including the misconception that chronic stress is a major cause, LiveScience reports.
Sixty-five percent of those surveyed believed that miscarriage is a rare occurence, when in reality, it happens in one out of four pregnancies, according to the researchers from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in New York.
"Miscarriage is a traditionally taboo subject that is rarely discussed publicly - even though nearly 1 million occur in the U.S. each year, making it the most common complication of pregnancy," study researcher Dr. S. Zev Williams, an OB-GYN at Albert Einstein College, said in a statement.
Williams and his team surveyed 1,083 American and women on their personal beliefs and experiences surrounding miscarriages, including the causes, frequency and emotional impact on the women that suffer them.
Sixty-six percent reported that the impact of losing a child to miscarriage is as emotionally severe as losing a child that has already been born. Though 76 percent reported that chronic stress or a stressful event is a common cause, in reality, 60 to 80 percent of miscarriages are the result of chromosomal abnormalities. Doctors can use karyotyping, a technique for identifying an abnormal number of chromosomes, to identify the genetic causes for miscarriages.
A new type of karyotyping called rescue karyotyping was presented today (Oct. 17) along with the survey's results at at the meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) in Boston.
"Through this technique, we hope to get a better understanding for why miscarriage occurs in some women," Williams said in the statement.
Rescue karyotyping offers a new way of finding chromosonal abnormalities sometime after the miscarriage occurs by saving and analyzing testing tissue that can reveal important information.
Although stress is not a direct cause of miscarriages, stress can increase one's risk, as it often elevates stress hormones in the body that can have a detrimental effect on the fetus.
