Foetal medicine

[Flowersandthings]

I’ve been referred to foetal medicine because the sonographer saw a thing on the scan she didn’t recognise. It says on my notes it’s an avascular hypoechoic area. She queried adrenal or bowel pathology. Any medics know what any of that means?!

An avascular hypoechoic area is an area of tissue which is denser than usual (shows up as a dark grey patch on a scan). Avascular means there aren't any blood vessels in it. I don't know what it means from a prognosis point of view, though.

Avascular means that the area in question doesn't look to be vascular in origin (vascular means to do with blood vessels/the circulatory system), and hypoechoic means the area is more dense/solid. Renal means to do with the kidneys, and the adrenal glands sit near the kidneys and produce a number of hormones. Pathology is a term that can often be quite scary to a non-medic, but it's widely used as a way of saying "something is going on here that needs checked out".

It sounds like the sonographer has spotted an area near or in a kidney, which is denser than would be expected and doesn't seem to be blood, which they'd like the specialists to look at a bit more closely.

There can be a number of different causes of areas with that appearance on an ultrasound, so they'll need to do some more investigations to figure out what's going on for your baby. It's important to keep in mind that quite a few of these causes aren't concerning in themselves, so try not to jump to the worst case scenarios - at the moment they just need to get more information to work out what's going on.

The foetal medicine team should be able to give you information about the specifics - hopefully they'll be able to see you soon - the waiting is one of the hardest bits, I think!

Thank you! That makes sense!