PREGNANT women should not expose their unborn babies to unnecessary ultrasound scans because too little is known about the dangers, an academic has warned.
Karen Pollard, a medical imaging lecturer at Charles Sturt University, says mothers-to-be are now routinely getting the scans at least once during pregnancy.
While they are not necessarily unsafe, the dangers of the procedure have never really been established, said Ms Pollard, who will lecture publicly on the topic tomorrow.
"If there's a medical reason to have an ultrasound, have it, but if its purely for curiosity, don't," she said. Old studies showing that ultrasound was safe were no longer relevant because today's equipment had far greater exposure intensity than earlier scans, Ms Pollard said.
"What we do know about intensities at that level is if you were to ultrasound a cyst, you may see acoustic streaming, that is, the fluid in the cyst starts to move around," she said.
"If it can do that to the fluid inside a cyst at relatively short exposure times, what is it doing to a 12-week foetus which is at a stage of development where cell division is happening and the organs are forming?
"I have some concerns." Ultrasound scans used to be performed at about 18 to 20 weeks through the mother's abdomen, she said. But these days it has become routine to have an ultrasound through the vagina at 12 weeks, "so the ultrasound probe is right up against the cervix, right next to the foetus."
"If someone asks is it safe, the GP may say 'yes' whereas the sonographer will say 'well we think so, as far as we know'," Ms Pollard said.
A ten-year Western Australia study showed that babies who were scanned a lot had significant growth retardation. Ms Pollard said while these babies were probably being scanned due to worries about their growth rate, the ultrasound may also have affected their size.
"We just don't know," she said. Another study from Sweden has linked ultrasound to brain damage causing left-handedness in babies.
But the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists has repeatedly said no clinical studies have shown any risk to unborn children from the scans.
Pregnant women warned over ultrasounds
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