Parents misinformed whether their twins are identical or not during scans

Parents are being misinformed about  whether their twins are identical during scans, research from UCL finds.

In fact, almost 15 per cent of parents are being told incorrectly whether their twins are identical or not.

The problem falls with a lack of knowledge among health professionals about twins and placentas.

A 25-30 per cent of identical twins can have two placentas if the zygote splits within two days of fertilisation, researchers say.

The researchers, led by Dr Clare Llewellyn of UCL’s Health Behaviour Research Centre, found that out of 1,302 parents, 191 were misinformed about whether their same sex twins’ were either identical or non-identical.

Co-author Professor Jane Wardle, also of UCL’s Health Behaviour Research Centre, said: “Finding out if your twins are identical or not is important to parents. However our data suggests that there may be a lack of knowledge among some health professionals about both identical and non-identical twins having two placentas.”

An 82 per cent of the parents questioned said they had been given the information about whether their twins were identical or not at the prenatal scan.

The research was published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology last week.