This site is intended for healthcare professionals

account_circleSign in
Go to /sign-in page

You can view 5 more pages before signing in

Checking (check) whether pregnant (pregnancy) when starting (start) or changing (change) in contraception (contraceptive method)

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

Healthcare practitioners can be reasonably certain that a woman is not currently pregnant if any one or more of the following criteria are met and there are no symptoms or signs of pregnancy:

  • she has not had intercourse since the start of her last normal (natural) menstrual period, since childbirth, abortion, miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or uterine evacuation for gestational trophoblastic disease
  • she has been correctly and consistently using a reliable method of contraception. (For the purposes of being reasonably certain that a woman is not currently pregnant, barrier methods of contraception can be considered reliable providing that they have been used consistently and correctly for every episode of intercourse.)
  • she is within the first 5 days of the onset of a normal (natural) menstrual period
  • she is less than 21 days postpartum (non-breastfeeding women)*
  • she is fully breastfeeding, amenorrhoeic and less than 6 months postpartum*
  • she is within the first 5 days after abortion, miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy or uterine evacuation for gestational trophoblastic disease
  • she has not had intercourse for >21 days and has a negative high-sensitivity urine pregnancy test (able to detect human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG) levels around
    20 mIU/ml).

* See UKMEC 2016 and FSRH Guideline Contraception After Pregnancy for recommendations regarding use of combined normonal contraception after childbirth.

A negative pregnancy test, if available, adds weight to the exclusion of pregnancy, but only if >=3 weeks since the last episode of unprotected sexual intercourse (UPSI).

NB. In addition to the conditions mentioned above, health professionals should also consider whether a woman is at risk of becoming pregnant as a result of UPSI within the last 7 days

Reference:

Related pages

Create an account to add page annotations

Create a free account

Add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation, such as a web address or phone number. This information will always be displayed when you visit this page