Many young girls ask me anxiously when they enter the clinic: “Doctor, I have thalassemia, please help me to check if it is serious, I am planning to get pregnant”, I carefully checked their labs and found that although many of them carry the thalassemia gene, they do not show anemia, that is, they are only alpha and beta gene carriers. In this case, as long as their partners are completely normal, the child will have at most the same “thalassemia” as the mother, and will appear to be a carrier. However, if the partner is a carrier of the same type of thalassemia as they are, there is still a 1 in 4 chance of having a baby with thalassemia major. So what is thalassemia? Thalassemia, also known as thalassemia, is a group of inherited hemolytic anemia diseases. Thalassemia is a group of inherited hemolytic anemias, which is an anemia or pathological condition caused by the absence or deficiency of one or more of the globin chains in hemoglobin synthesis due to genetic defects. Due to the complexity and diversity of genetic defects, the type, quantity and clinical symptoms of the deficient nucleoprotein chains are highly variable. Thalassemia is named and classified according to the type and degree of deficiency. Thalassemia is divided into four types: α, β, δβ and δ, among which β and α thalassemia are more common. The disease is widely distributed in many regions of the world, and Southeast Asia is one of the high prevalence areas. It is common in Guangdong, Guangxi and Sichuan in China, with disseminated cases in the provinces south of the Yangtze River and rare in the north. Therefore, couples located in these areas should pay more attention to prenatal consultation and examination before pregnancy.