Newborn Screening: Current Status

Newborn screening, which represents one of the major advances in child health of the past century, has been carried out in all fifty U.S. states since the 1970s. Newborn screening programs are state-run, and decisions are left to the individual states regarding the conditions to be screened for, the mechanism for confirmatory testing, follow-up care, and financing of the programs. Laboratory advances in tandem mass spectrometry make it possible to screen newborns for many rare inborn errors of metabolism. This raises many policy issues including screening's cost-effectiveness, ethics, quality, and oversight.