Prenatal Diagnosis Center

Introduction to the Prenatal Diagnosis Center

Established in January 2012, the Shenzhen Bao'an Prenatal Diagnosis Center is the first prenatal diagnosis center in Bao'an District. It is responsible for prenatal diagnosis and birth defect prevention and control for a population of nearly 5 million in Bao'an District. The center currently has 42 medical and technical staff, including 25 with senior professional titles and 18 with master's degrees or above, among whom 3 hold doctoral degrees. In the past five years, center members have been awarded 2 NSFC grants and have published over 20 SCI papers and 7 papers in leading Chinese medical journals. Over more than nine years of development, the center has consistently ranked first among prenatal diagnosis centers in Shenzhen in terms of outpatient visits and interventional prenatal diagnosis procedures. In 2020, the center was successfully recognized as a Shenzhen Key Medical Specialty as a sub-specialty. The center maintains an ongoing collaboration with the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Team led by Professor Leung Tak Yeung at the Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, providing high-quality maternal medicine and fetal medicine services to pregnant women in Shenzhen.

The center currently offers the following routine services:

1.Reproductive and Genetic Counseling

2.Interventional Prenatal Diagnosis, including chorionic villus sampling (CVS), amniocentesis (including for twin pregnancies), and cordocentesis.

3.Fetal Intrauterine Treatment, including rapid amnioreduction, isothermic amnioinfusion, intracardiac potassium chloride injection for fetal reduction, radiofrequency ablation for fetal reduction, fetoscopic laser photocoagulation of placental vessels, intrauterine fetal blood transfusion via coelomic-amniotic shunt, and other procedures.

4.Imaging-Based Prenatal Diagnosis, including Level III fetal structural screening, targeted fetal echocardiography, and fetal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

5.Genetic Testing, including chromosomal karyotyping, FISH (fluorescence in situ hybridization), MLPA (multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification), chromosomal microarray analysis (CMA), non-invasive prenatal genetic screening (NIPT/NIPS), Sanger sequencing, whole-exome high-throughput sequencing, carrier screening for single-gene disorders, and hearing loss gene screening.

Discipline Leader: Zhang Rui, M.D., Ph.D.
Dr. Zhang is Director of the Department of Medical Genetics and Prenatal Diagnosis. Dr. Zhang has been a visiting scholar at the Wexner Medical Center of The Ohio State University, USA, and at the Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Dr. Zhang serves as a Youth Committee Member of the Medical Genetics Physician Branch of the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, a Youth Committee Member of the China Maternal and Child Health Association, and a Standing Committee Member of the Medical Genetics Branch of the Shenzhen Medical Association. Dr. Zhang has been working at Shenzhen Bao'an Women's and Children's Hospital since 2008, specializing in prenatal diagnosis, fetal medicine, and birth defect prevention and control. Dr. Zhang current research focuses on clinical intrauterine intervention and related mechanisms in complicated twin pregnancies.