Reassurance in the first trimester

I had my first scan last night (at 10 weeks) and am stupidly searching the net to find stats on miscarriage risk from now on. Anyway, I found this article which may give relief to those of you who are worrying about your little one, even after a scan or two...


REUTERS HEALTH INFORMATION
Miscarriage Risk Minimal After Normal First Antenatal Visit

March 14, 2008 ? For asymptomatic women with ultrasound evidence of fetal viability at a first antenatal visit, the risk of subsequent miscarriage is less than 2% ? well below previously reported rates ? according to a large, prospective study conducted in Australia.

The overall risk of miscarriage once a woman knows she is pregnant is 12% to 15%, the researchers note in the March issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Even after ultrasound has demonstrated fetal viability, studies have shown that spontaneous abortion rates can be as high as 12%.

However, none of these studies have exclusively investigated women with no symptoms of threatened miscarriage, such as vaginal bleeding or suprapubic pain, Dr. Stephen Tong, from Monash University in Victoria, and colleagues point out.

Dr. Tong's group conducted a prospective cohort study among 696 asymptomatic women with singleton pregnancies who attended their first antenatal visit between 6 and 11 weeks of gestation. Ultrasound examination documented evidence of fetal cardiac activity. (The group did not include women who had a fetus with bradycardia or who subsequently underwent elective abortion.)

Eleven patients (1.6%) had a miscarriage before 20 weeks. The risk was relatively high at 9.4% among the women examined at 6 completed weeks of gestation, falling to 1.5% among those presenting at 8 weeks, and less than 0.7% from 9 weeks onward.

"We used a pragmatic design where the study was embedded into the usual running of an antenatal clinic, not a specialized early pregnancy clinic or an ultrasound department," Dr. Tong's group points out, and none of the attending physicians who performed the initial ultrasonography had any formal subspecialty qualifications.

"Consequently, we believe that our data could be extrapolated generally to health care providers provided that they are able to offer office ultrasonography to confirm viability at that visit," the team surmises.

They conclude that, for asymptomatic women presenting for their first prenatal visit at 8 to 11 weeks of gestation with no a priori risk such as assisted reproduction or increased parity, "our data may be useful as a counseling tool to reassure such women at the end of their first prenatal visit that their risk of loss is already very low."