Declining all ultrasounds?

[DoubtOfTheOrdinary]

Hi all, I have my dating scan at the end of this month but I've been reading about 50 studies that recently came out of China questioning the safety of ultrasound scans, and wondering if anyone's gone through their pregnancy without having any?

The studies were done on Chinese women who were already planning to terminate their pregnancies for non-medical reasons. They exposed some of the fetuses to additional scans prior to the termination, then compared the fetal tissues post-termination with those who hadn't had any additional scans. The fetuses that had been exposed to additional ultrasounds had higher levels of cellular damage than those who hadn't. The suggestion is that routine ultrasounds could be a factor in things like autism, learning disabilities, childhood cancers, and immunity issues like eczema and allergies.

There's more info at
www.birthpracticeandpolitics.org/single-post/2019/04/03/Ultrasound-Unsound and www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/50-in-utero-human-studies-confirm-risks-prenatal-ultrasound/ for those interested. I need to do more reading around the topic before I make any drastic decisions, obviously, but atm I'm curious about the experiences of women who've declined all ultrasounds in their pregnancies. Did you have any trouble from the midwives/obstetricians? Were you happy you made that choice in the end?

In the past I would have said do what makes you comfortable but I know a baby who is the first baby to survive with a very condition. It is very treatable but has to be done within minutes and with newborns by the time they’ve identified the issue after birth it’s too late. It’s so rare they are the first baby to have the issue identified in a scan and treated at the moment of birth.

Without a scan he would have died.

Pregnancy is anxiety inducing so it's easy to get sucked into all sorts of thought spirals! Very few things in life are completely without risk but it's all a balance. Lots of people are injured by seatbelts every year but they also save lives. It would be difficult to sensibly argue that we should stop wearing seatbelts! It's all about the risk/benefit analysis.

I hope you have a super uneventful pregnancy and congrats!

Is this going to be the new anti vaccination thing

This is pathetic.

I had 6 scans with my DD, included 2 3D scans, she is a perfectly healthy full of life 2.5 year old.

My sister had 1 scan in her last pregnancy trying to dodge social services and her son has white matter on the brain.

Having a scan isn't going to effect your baby, its not an x-ray or MRI, what it can tell you though is whether your child may need help when its born!!!!

I’m a high risk pregnancy (at the lowest end of high risk) and have turned down the 24 week scan for various reasons.
One being that the clinic is so badly run it took three hours to be scanned and see a consultant last time, which cost nearly £50 by the time I’d paid parking and the babysitter.

I then had to go back to the hospital a week (and another £50) later to look round and be told I have no birth choices - it’s there way or the highway.
I was threatened with Social Services, the safe guarding team, and having brain damaged children.
So when the NHS offers you scans please be aware, it’s not an offer, it’s mandatory.

@Middledistancerunner it’s really not.

I think if you're genuinely concerned, perhaps just have the 20 week scan.

But the way I look at things, the NHS can't afford to pay for things for no reason. So the benefits must outweigh the risk.

Posts like this highlight the poor quality of Science education in this country.

That someone would risk the health of their unborn child by opting out of a proven and tested screening program because of a dubious Chinese study worries me. It’s the same with anti-vaxers. Crazy.

I'm grateful to the NHS for providing scans in order to help identify any potential problems developing with mum &/or baby.
Sometimes I think we're becoming oblivious to just quite how lucky we are to have the medical technology on offer.

I don't think I'd quite consider myself in the same league as an anti-vaxxer! (Or a "vintage disease enthusiast" as I've seen them called )
I wasn't saying "I'm definitely going to decline all my scans because I read a second-hand report of a study"; I was saying "I read about a study, it was sort of interesting but I'll need to do more reading about it. Has anybody else come across or experienced this?"
So thanks to all for sharing your opinions and experiences. No need to be scathing.

A scan is INFINITESIMALLY low risk to a foetus.

If it wasn't for my 2nd scan I wouldn't have known my baby was already dying. We absolutely need scans.

As an obstetric sonographer myself I can tell you categorically you are being utterly ridiculous! It's a very dangerous (for both mother and baby) and irresponsible notion to even trust these studies as factual.

I wish you well in your pregnancy OP.

The reason you are being scanned is to check for problems that could threaten the life of the baby and you. Knowing if any problems exist will affect the care you receive and mean if the baby was found to have a problem it would receive the best care in the best place.
The NHS offers 2 routine scans for this perpose it’s hardly excessive.
If you are genenenly concerned for your babies health ( and your own) just go and have scans.
The research is highly flawed btw.

Bless you OP, just remember if you look for it there is 'evidence' that everything in pregnancy and childhood causing autism.

The NHS does two scans as standard which is less than almost every other country in the world. One, officially, to check for the presence of a baby, how many there are, for fatal abnormalities and to screen for Down's Syndrome if you have it; the other to check for anomalies that may be fatal or need intervention at birth, screen for growth and check the position of the placenta. These are tightly controlled and regulated and not based on financial pressures (they cost quite a bit of money).

As previous posters have pointed out, not knowing you're having twins, have a placenta praevia, have a very small baby, etc could prove very challenging for you and/or the baby and potentially could result in the serious injury or death of one or both of you.

I chose to have the dating scan, but not the anomaly scan (not because of a possible risk from the u/s, just because I didn’t want to know if there were any anomalies and felt it wouldn’t make a difference to my care at that point)

There was no problem with not having it done, although they were surprised because almost everyone gets them.

However, later on in the pregnancy, they had some concerns about growth and I was happy to have a scan at that point.

I figured an experienced midwife should pick up any serious issues, and recommend a scan if necessary. Which in fact they did later on.

Risks are so minimal.
I had both routine scans with DC1 and DC2, nothing amiss was detected in either one - DC1 has never had any kind of medical issues in her life any worse than a cold/stomach bug etc. DC2 has an array of life threatening allergies, and respiratory issues as a result of the allergies. I don’t blame ultrasound scans for those things as there’s no definitive proof that they may cause any of those problems.
I’m pregnant with DC3, and my first ultrasound detected a major placenta praevia. If I’d not had scans, and had just gone through the pregnancy, and gone into labour on my own not knowing anything was wrong, me and my baby would be dead. Scans save lives.

Personally I'd avoid The Healthy Home Economist as a source, OP. I've seem some seriously irresponsible posts on there in the past (trying to scare women silly about anti-D, convince them to refuse newborn Vitamin K etc). There are much better alternative/ natural- leaning parenting resources if that's your taste.

Surely if you are a HCP you’d engage your brain

@Grumpbum123 Who said I was an HCP? There are many non-clinical roles in the NHS

@Onthebackf00t Thanks, I hadn't come across the site before so didn't know if it was generally reputable or not. I'm not necessarily into alternative / natural-leaning parenting, just interested in different options and opinions. But I'll give THHE a wide berth - I'm very pro-anti-D (probably wouldn't be carrying this baby without it!) and will definitely be accepting Vit K, so it sounds like she's on a different page to me.

Thanks to all those who've shared their experiences!

Cancer and cell degeneration amongst East Asian people is higher than others. This study was formed to test whether ultrasounds made that worse and I think, one of the reasons why more isn’t being made of it by the Asian science community, is because it was shit.

Everything we do has some effect. But babies are saved with ultrasound. I k ow people who had a heart defect detecyed in utero so the baby was able to be dealt with straight after birth. Would have died otherwise. We arw very lucky to have the health service we do.

If the options were have an ultrasound and then do nothing with the information. Not having the ultrasound would make sense it.

But as the options are not have the ultrasound or do have the ultrasound and be able to identify illnesses while I can dp something about it its a no brainer.

Your web addresses link to an open letter which reads as paranoid nonsense and a paranoid, anti vax, anti big pharma website.

Unless or until a publication like the BMJ publishes a solid, peer reviewed, well researched paper, I won't doubt the safety and efficacy or ultrasound techniques.