Alamy
Doctors have announced a new test that can predict how likely a mum-to-be is to miscarry.
The new urine check test could eventually save some of the 250,000 pregnancies that end in miscarriage every year.
The research team responsible for the test, based at St Mary's Hospital in Manchester, studied 112 women at risk of miscarriage, all between six and 10 weeks pregnant.
The docs found they could predict the outcome of nine out of 10 problem pregnancies by measuring the amount of bleeding the pregnant mums were suffering, looking at the levels of pregnancy hormone in the blood and in their urine.
Up until now, doctors haven't been able to predict how likely a miscarriage is for individual mums-to-be, despite one in five pregnancies threatened by it.
Dr Kaltum Adam, who led the study, said the test was exciting as it didn't require specialist, sophisticated equipment:
'This research has, for the first time, offered us a robust tool to begin to attempt to rescue pregnancies threatening to miscarry when, currently, all we can do is fold our hands and hope for the best.'
This sounds like a fantastic medical advance, doesn't it?