Pregnancy and ultrasounds

[Sylwusia234]

Hi I am 4 months pregnant how many ultrasounds are recomended to have during pregnancy? I had 4 already is that too much? Are too many ultrasounds harmful to the baby?

Nope I don't think you should be worried. I I had to have scans every 2 weeks with my twins and both my babies are fine ! Don't worry about harm, it's unlikely to cause any issues, they don't use radiation. From what I've read online they can't guarantee 100% that they can't cause some kind of harm, but it's unlikely that that they do x

I live overseas and it's standard to have scans every 4 weeks, more if there are twins or complications. Definitely don't worry about it.

I had over 20 with my now 11 month old.

I was told that it wasn't anything to worry about.
What we did need to worry about though, was his heart. Which was why we needed all the scans.

Why have you had so many?
If they're needed medically, then you are better to take them.

I think there was research done which showed that the higher the number of scans, the more likely the child was to be left handed.
Nothing else was found.

I had them fortnightly until birth because her limbs were growing disproportionately long in relation to the size of her tummy. In fact in the last 2 weeks I had them every 48 hours.

DD is right-handed and all is absolutely fine with no issues at all.

If they have not been specifically recommended by an obstetrician, I would avoid.
Recent evidence is showing a connection between ultrasound and neurological damage. The results at the moment are limited but sufficient to suggest a degree of caution.

The doctor wouldn't suggest ultrasounds if not for a good reason. The risk of ultrasounds is very small and is probably outweighed by whatever reason you're having extra scans. I wouldn't worry about the scans but if you're concerned speak to your midwife or doctor.

I had about 6 with DS, 1 or 2 for early pregnancy bleeding, 12 and 20 week scan, one at 28 weeks to check my placenta, growth scan at 36ish weeks as measuring small.

I've only had the standard 2 this time round (34 weeks) and that seems not enough in comparison!

There is absolutely no evidence that ultrasounds cause damage. There is a scare article from 2001 in the Telegraph, the usual poor and scare mongering fabrications, that is all.

journals.lww.com/neurotodayonline/Fulltext/2006/09190/Prolonged_Ultrasound_Disrupts_Brain_Development_in.2.aspx

There is a study done on foetal mice in 2006 at Yale. Good research but it was unborn mice not unborn babies, so a degree of inconclusiveness. Frequent unnecessary ultrasound is not something I’d risk.

And on 2010 from NHS
www.nhs.uk/news/pregnancy-and-child/warning-over-souvenir-baby-scans/

An interesting discussion around increase in autism and ultrasound.
midwiferytoday.com/mt-articles/questions-prenatal-ultrasound/

The truth is that because most women have ultrasound exposure it is not possible to do controlled studies easily. There is evidence of some side effects and I personally would not encourage anyone to have more than the ‘essential’ scans.

Can I just add in about ultra sounds and possible links of left handed ness and autism

If there are multiple scans being Carried out it's more likely to be because there are some concerns about the development of the baby for whatever reason

re left hand thats often twins or a twin pregnancy where one has miscarried .. hence extra scans

Autism linked with other disorders and Orem babies or babies starved of oxygen etc
Again another reason to scan and see the baby

So I don't think the scans cause anything but I think you have more scans if there is a medical concerns about any sort of variation

Cultmaskid
Sadly lots of scans re carried out for non medical reasons at a very early stage of foetal development when any risk would be greatest.

I’m not saying don’t have scans at all but rather to think carefully about repeated non medical scans.

I had a lot of scans...with both of mine! But then I had difficult pregnancies.

Dc1...8 weeks massive bleed. 2 at 12 weeks one for a massive bleed and one for a the main 12 week scan. One at 16 weeks again for a massive bleed. One at 20 weeks, one at 28 week. One at 32 weeks and one at 36 weeks then one before I gave birth.

Dc2 a 7 week one...12 week one...a 16 week one...20 week one I had 2 of these as they were worried about a couple of things. A 28 week one and then every 2 weeks till delivery. I had 2 when I lost my waters.

Both my children are right handed and perfectly normal.

I never really researched it and went on what the consultants said to do they were the experts.

There is no evidence that ultrasounds cause any problems at all. However, theoretically, there could be a risk during the first 10 weeks, as the embryo is very small and vulnerable at that point. Again, there is no actual evidence or data to back this up, and many women have ultrasounds in this period and go on to have a healthy baby, but just in case it's generally not recommended to do ultrasounds for non-medical reasons at that point in pregnancy. It very much depends on the type of ultrasound used though, some have a higher power and aren't recommended in the first trimester, a bog-standard ultrasound has a much lower intensity and shouldn't cause any harm.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists released a paper about this in 2015, the paper itself is quite long (though CherryPavlova may find it interesting, as they address a number of animal studies like the one she linked to), but this is a good summary if you're interested: www.rcog.org.uk/en/news/rcog-release-the-use-of-ultrasound-before-10-weeks-gestation-is-examined-in-a-new-scientific-opinion-paper/

So to answer your question OP, there's no maximum amount of ultrasounds you can have in pregnancy, all the evidence we have shows that ultrasounds are safe, even in the first trimester, so I really wouldn't worry about the ones you've had up to this point. Hopefully that will reassure you, but if you have any concerns I would encourage you to speak to your midwife/obstetrician.

Firstly, there are plenty of women who get no ultrasounds whatsoever during pregnancy so it's quite easy to access a control population.

Secondly, the study quoted says itself that there is NO EVIDENCE that ultrasounds cause any behavioral problems even in the mice examined, much less in any humans. So it's a massive and unreasonable stretch to worry about human embryos based on this.

Thirdly, the RCOG is an opinion piece, not a study and advises caution before 10 weeks in pregnancies with other risk factors for MC. Hardly shocking given the general caution with which early pregnancies are approached given that we know so little about MCs.

Thirdly, the RCOG is an opinion piece, not a study and advises caution before 10 weeks in pregnancies with other risk factors for MC.

I never said it was a study? It’s an opinion piece, but the opinions of experts in this field, so a pretty good source I would say. Also I agree that ultrasounds are safe, I repeated that in my previous post, I only mentioned that the RCOG doesn’t recommend non-medical ultrasounds in the first trimester because others on the thread had brought it up.

If the opinions of experts in medicine were sufficient we would not need the massive drive for evidence based medicine. The whole point is that experts have prejudices, which is why they perform knee arthroscopies and stringently enforce long NBM rules before operations. Pregnancy is an area where experts have particularly strong prejudices, so an opinion piece is not the best source to cite in a thread where the OP is seeking reassurance and false claims about risks have already been made.

But the paper is basically a summary where they look at the available evidence and conclude that ultrasounds are safe, so I really don’t understand why you think that wouldn’t be reassuring to the OP? My intention was to show that ultrasounds aren’t harmful, I was trying to dispute the claims made on this thread.

Apologies, I lumped your considered post in with CherryPavlova's alarmist warnings.

Thank goodness for that, I was starting to think I had expressed myself really poorly in my earlier post

Though re-reading it I maybe could have been clearer. For the avoidance of doubt, all the evidence we have says that ultrasounds are safe. In the study CherryPavlova linked to they blasted the developing mice with high-intensity ultrasound aimed straight at their brains for a prolonged period of time and that’s not something that would ever been done during a normal ultrasound (and the results are not directly applicable to humans anyway). There’s the obvious proviso that ultrasounds shouldn’t be done willy-nilly, but they’ve been used for decades on millions of women across the world so if they were unsafe we would be seeing the effects by now.

I think there's a financial element as well. Leading women to believe that ultrasounds are dangerous (and elective csections as well but that's a different discussion) is an extremely convenient way to save resources on a strapped system. I don't think it's a coincidence that rumours of ultrasounds being risky are most widespread in the UK, where it's also significantly more difficult to obtain scans in first place.

In comparison in central Europe, ultrasounds are always given if requested or needed and there is no culture of women or medical staff fearmongering about the risks. Of course, pure common sense denotes that that scanning a baby for no good reason is probably NOT a good idea. However the potential risks are negligible compared to concrete medical reasons for which a developing fetus may need an ultrasound.

There so many things to worry about in a pregnancy that adding ultrasound scans on top seems like another way to stress women out and give them the feeling that they must be held responsible for making mistakes that led to negative outcomes in their baby.

I've had 1 so far at 12 weeks and will be having my 20 week scan in January