Pregnancy & Baby 

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Ultrasound scans

Jelly on the tum, a roving doppler and, hey presto, you see your baby on the screen. Dr Chris Brown looks at the role ultrasound scans play in antenatal care

Obstetric ultrasound was first introduced in the late 1950s. It provides a safe, non-invasive and accurate way of investigating pregnancy and the foetus, and has become a routine diagnostic tool in antenatal care. The technology has advanced considerably in the last 50 years.

There’s now a revolutionary, three-dimensional, scanner – only available in a few centres in the UK at the moment – which gives such clear pictures that medical staff can diagnose many foetal abnormalities more accurately, and at an earlier stage of the pregnancy.

Another valuable feature of this scanner is that the clear pictures encourage an early bonding between the parents and their, as yet, unborn baby. We know that couples develop a powerful emotional attachment to their baby, as pregnancy develops but, with a detailed image from this scanner, parents will be able to identify with the pregnancy in a completely different way, and this early bonding will help them through the labour-delivery-birth processes.

Though the routine scan that mothers have at the moment produces pictures that are blurred and difficult to make out, most parents find it a moving experience as they catch the first glimpse of their baby on screen.

Ultrasound can be used to help the medical team to:

• Establish how many weeks pregnant you are
• Say whether you have one or more babies
• Locate the placental position
• Measure the rate of growth of your baby (several scans are needed)
• Check that your baby has a heart beat
• Assess the amount of amniotic fluid
• Check for possible ectopic pregnancy
• Guide the needle position in amniocentesis
• Assist in other diagnostic procedures such as chorionic villus sampling (CVS) and umbilical cord blood sampling
• Diagnose certain abnormalities
• Assess vaginal bleeding in early pregnancy
• Confirm foetal presentation e.g breech in uncertain cases
• Diagnose and monitor gynaecological conditions such as fibroids and ovarian cysts during pregnancy

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