Diagnostic Value of Cell-Free DNA Fetal Fraction in Patients With Prenatally Suspected Placenta Accreta Spectrum Disorder.

OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between fetal fraction (FF) and placenta accreta spectrum (PAS) pathology in patients with prenatally suspected PAS.

METHODS

This was a case-control study utilizing a database of pregnancies with suspected or proven PAS delivered between 6/2012 and 7/2024 at a single institution. Pregnancies were excluded if FF was not reported. The primary outcome was mean FF in pregnancies with a final clinical diagnosis of low FIGO grade (no PAS or FIGO1-2) versus high FIGO grade (FIGO3) placenta accreta. Results were reported as mean FF ± standard error of the mean. Adjusted means were also reported after assessing confounders.

RESULTS

Of the 468 pregnancies assessed, 128 met the full inclusion criteria. While the unadjusted mean FF in the low-grade group did not differ from the high-grade group (9.6% ± 0.49, n = 81 vs. 10.7% ± 0.64, n = 47; p = 0.22), the adjusted mean FF in the low-grade group was significantly lower than that in the high-grade group (9.3% ± 0.48 vs. 11.1% ± 0.64; p = 0.03).

CONCLUSIONS

While FF alone is unlikely to be clinically useful in predicting PAS pathology, NIPT results have the potential to improve the diagnostic precision of other clinical tools for PAS prediction.