http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0605294103v1
Prenatal exposure to ultrasound waves impacts neuronal migration in mice
Communicated by Dale Purves, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC, June 29, 2006 (received for review August 5, 2005)
Neurons of the cerebral neocortex in mammals, including humans, are generated during fetal life in the proliferative zones and then migrate to their final destinations by following an inside-to-outside sequence. The present study examined the effect of ultrasound waves (USW) on neuronal position within the embryonic cerebral cortex in mice. We used a single BrdU injection to label neurons generated at embryonic day 16 and destined for the superficial cortical layers. Our analysis of over 335 animals reveals that, when exposed to USW for a total of 30 min or longer during the period of their migration, a small but statistically significant number of neurons fail to acquire their proper position and remain scattered within inappropriate cortical layers and/or in the subjacent white matter. The magnitude of dispersion of labeled neurons was variable but systematically increased with duration of exposure to USW. These results call for a further investigation in larger and slower-developing brains of non-human primates and continued scrutiny of unnecessarily long prenatal ultrasound exposure.
“Ultrasound is misused at times,” says Helle Kieler of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. “There are a lot of ultrasound examinations performed which are not needed.”
Some mothers even seek videos of ultrasonic scans just to keep as mementoes, says Francis Duck, chairman of the European Committee for Medical Ultrasound Safety at the Royal United Hospital in Bath, UK.
Kieler’s team studied a group of Swedish men born between 1973 and 1978. Nearly 7000 had received ultrasonic scans in the womb, while 170,000 had not. Kieler found that of the men born between 1976 and 1978 who had ultrasonic scans in the womb, 32 per cent more than expected were left-handed. In an average population, around nine per cent of men are left-handed.
The scientists took account of factors such as premature birth, birth weight and maternal age, but admit that they cannot rule out post-natal environmental influences for the effect they found.
The results suggest that some men who genetically would have been expected to be born right-handed had actually grown up to be left-handed. Kieler says this could be due to a disruption of their brain development in the womb: “It’s commonly known among neuropsychiatrists that right-handed people can become left-handed by slight damage to the brain.”
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/parenting/10/21/fetal.photos/index.html
May 14th, 2008 - 3:59 am
Salams
Whilst it is agreeably OTT to have unnecessary ultrasound scans just for memories, in the vast majority of cases it is only done for a medical need. The studies quoted don’t prove any causation and may scare parents from having an USS where it is medically helpful.
ws
Umm Safiya
May 14th, 2008 - 5:48 am
BismillahirRahmanirRahim
Salamu’alaykum,
Maybe elsewhere it is given in medically necessary conditions, but in the US is near-mandatory for all pregnant women during their first visit and during the various trimesters as part of regular visits to the doctor.
What is the medical purpose for these ultrasounds?
-Yursil
May 14th, 2008 - 7:23 am
From the National Institute of Clinical Excellence:
“Pregnant women should be offered an early ultrasound scan between 10 weeks 0 days and 13 weeks 6 days to determine gestational age and to detect multiple pregnancies.
This will ensure consistency of gestational age assessment and reduce the incidence of induction of labour for prolonged pregnancy”
in addition, please see:
http://www.gpnotebook.co.uk/simplepage.cfm?ID=-939130845&linkID=34541&cook=yes
wasalam
Umm Safiya
May 14th, 2008 - 7:37 am
Asalaamu alaikum.
Speaking as someone in the health community, alot of ultrasounds that are done are not necessary. There are other ways of making some of the medical determinations that are now done by ultrasound, and far too many of the visits really are just to see the size of the baby and figure out the gender and talk about how cute it all is. There are certainly other ways to guage the size of the baby, and unless there is an actual problem it is not necessary to have exact measurements as frequently. There are also many times when an ultrasound is done because it is easier but it may not even be particularly effective in determining some things.
Speaking as someone who has had more ultrasounds than I can count, both during pregnancies, after miscarriages, and for other purposes, they are actually pretty ineffectual. The doctors invariably find something quite different when they examine me the old-fashioned way than what showed on the ultrasound - and often if they had just gone by the ultrasound, it would have been to my detriment and possibly even death, Allahu alim.
May 14th, 2008 - 11:57 pm
Ultrasounds in most parts of the world are definitely done unnecessarily. In fact, I’ve seen clinics where routine ultrasound is done at nearly every visit. Henci Goer as nice work on ultrasounds and unnecessary interventions, definitely recommend it.
I think the greater threat is the unnecessary intervention routine ultrasounds will cause - not necessarily the technology itself.
May 15th, 2008 - 7:20 am
Asalaamu alaikum.
You raise a good point too UmmZahra, about the interventions. I work as a scheduler for an agency that provides interpreters to doctors offices and the hospitals. I send out Spanish interpreters to an insane number of ultrasounds each week. The same women will have an ultrasound every week, sometimes even twice, scheduled (i.e., not an urgent situation where something doesn’t seem right, as I sometimes had during my pregnancy 12 yrs ago) throughout her entire pregnancy. Many of the patients complain about the difficulty of getting to so many hospital visits when their baby seems to be perfectly fine. But in some cases, this is being done because people assume that certain women need to be watched more for reasons that are inherently racist and not genuine concern for mother or baby, and you would be amazed at the candor of doctors etc in saying so. No shame. Most of the Somali and Sudanese women here do not get ultrasounds, or only once or twice. I personally know of at least one mother who was accused of neglect for no reason other than refusing to have certain unnecessary tests including ultrasounds, and her case was rested only when the baby was born completely healthy. They went so far as to refuse her right to have the baby at home and required her to have the baby in the hospital, where other issues of lack of cultural respect created further problems for her.
Besides that, there’s also the boon of being able to charge Medicaid and other insurance carriers repeatedly for procedures that weren’t actually necessary, so it is big money-making.
May 16th, 2008 - 6:34 am
BismillahirRahmanirRahim
Alaykumsalaam Umm Safiya,
From what you posted, it seems like most of the medical profession, that this is a problem created to solve another problem: ‘induction’, and avoiding long labor caused by early induction. But why are we inducing early in the first place?
http://pregnancychildbirth.suite101.com/article.cfm/labor_inductions_on_the_rise
If there was minimal use of inducing pregnancies with various hormones and chemicals, then what can you do with the information of the exact gestational age (based on ultrasound measurements)? Determining the gestational age to a +-2 week date is almost obvious with non-ultrasound means. Some may say they are even more accurate should we only learn to refine those arts.
And what can you do with knowing there are multiple pregnancies?
Really, the whole reality of pregnancy has changed, it is so plastic now. The desire of humanity to delve into mysteries of life progresses too far.
May 16th, 2008 - 11:38 am
Asalaamu alaikum.
I have personally known women who were told due to ultrasound that they had multiples and then didn’t, or only one baby was identified in ultrasounds, and at birth had twins (one I knew had triplets despite having had several ultrasounds throughout her pregnancy and no clue that there was more than one baby)! And I don’t mean just one or two women. So ultrasound is, in my mind, clearly not even a particularly effective means of making the determination. Allah is abovve all of this and can cause us to have multiple at His will, or not, at His will. I too don’t see any particular “need” to know there is more than one baby - you’ll know when you give birth, LOL.
And gestational age too… yeah, I don’t see the necessity of that. How do we think the human race has survived so many centuries without all this? The baby will be born when Allah allows it to be born. Besides, I was shocked to find out I was pregnant again after a bad miscarriage… I tested when I was 8 weeks along. But once I the home test said I was pregnant, I knew exactly when I had conceived even before they told me how far along I was based on tests, because I could backtrack my changes. And the first test, including u/s, they told me I was 13 weeks and I told them that wasn’t possible. Later when they “figured out” that I had been 8 weeks at that time, I already had known anyway.
May 16th, 2008 - 3:52 pm
S/A
Its nothing but a TOOL, to be used with discretion and wisdom….even over drinking water can cause humans to die….so one has to be careful…there is a lot of literature out there and opinions on the usage benefits of Ultrasound…..
Just a tool , used when needed thats all….
But this can become a war of opinions among those who are anti western and those who are confused about the direction of their current age, a huge group of Islamists are being guided into primitivism under the banner of Traditionalism by religious authorities these days while another huge group doesn’t understand their own situation…while the idea of Traditionalism comes from non Muslim origins which some Islamists have now nicely and wrongfully equated with the will of the Prophet…they forget that Islam blossomed and spiritised humanity with Sciences and Sounds …..
We can use ultrasound with caution and care to help us in the matters of health but we should not depend on the absoluteness of the results and keep our hopes and emotional strengths embedded in the might hands of the CREATOR, and yes GOD has HANDS…two hands…..,don’t you read Quran (literal meanings)….:)
Mulla!
These are my personal opinions….ignore em if you feel upset or ask something which will benefit both of us….:)
May 16th, 2008 - 8:16 pm
My wife had 1 ultrasound with both pregnancies. I didn’t feel they were unnecessary or unimportant. Especially considering the second pregnancy showed that we had multiples and certain measures were taken that undoubtedly saved my daughters’ lives and potentially my wife’s.
This is not to say that they aren’t over used by some or in some places, but saying they are completely ineffective and a waste of time is by far an overstatement in my opinion.
I agree that they are a useful tool and have a very real purpose and use.
May 16th, 2008 - 10:08 pm
Asalaamu alaikum Aaron, you are correct that there are benefits to the ultrasound at times. No one here said any such thing as “they are completely ineffective and a waste of time”. In fact, Yursil wrote “Maybe elsewhere it is given in medically necessary conditions”, which clearly means that it is recognized that there *are* “medically necessary conditions”, such as what you describe in your wife’s case.
Yes, they are a “useful tool and have a very real purpose and use” but that purpose is not how they are actually used in MANY cases. In the my city, remember, I am speaking as someone who is part of the medical community, they are used during pregnancy at times for the sole purpose of determining the gender of the baby and allowing the parents to have the memory of seeing the baby in utero. There are multiple - and by multiple I mean more than three times - in the pregnancy that the woman is required to have an ultrasound. The first time is immediately upon realizing she is pregnant and it is done to determine the size of the baby to determine her gestation date. This is not a necessary use of the ultrasound, as has been discussed there are plenty of safer and even easier (and even free) methods by which that can be determined, nor is the ultrasound always accurate in this regard. Later, an ultrasound is scheduled for the one and only purpose of trying to find out the gender of the baby. While that may be nice to know, I would not say that is a “real purpose”. In my case, when they were not able to make that determination at the time they thought they would be able to, I was scheduled for another ultrasound for that reason alone. Even though personally, I didn’t really care if I knew in advance the gender of my baby, the doctors felt that it was an essential piece of infomation.
And I don’t personally think one ultrasound during pregnancy is so terrible. And it may reveal a medical reason to have more than one. But that simply isn’t how it really happens in some places. Yes, they have a purpose, but their beneficial purpose is not how they are overwhelmingly being used, and that is why some of us question them.
May 17th, 2008 - 10:20 am
BismillahirRahmanirRahim
Salamu’alaykum
I think the issue is being misunderstood. This is scientific evidence as to the problems ultrasounds can cause.
The issue now is that ultrasound is a routine practice, its done on nearly every single baby born in the West, every single case, often more than once. It was accepted very quickly as a technology, and we are seeing scientific evidence (above) that there are negative effects to it. I had no ultrasound with my second child, and with my first I did. Both turned out fine Alhamdulillah, but who knows the effects (as listed in the second study above) that we don’t realize.
Really the lost art of midwifery has created a basic lack of knowledge of how much was possible before the days of modern birthing. This is a lost art which has allowed humanity to survive, and prosper for thousands of years.
The reality is that there is no need for ultrasound to be so routine. There are literally numerous other ways to detect conditions that need overt medical attention during birth, which can than necessitate a medical intervention and procedure such as ultrasound.
May 17th, 2008 - 1:28 pm
http://curezone.com/art/read.asp?ID=83&db=1&C0=1
May 17th, 2008 - 1:28 pm
‘Dr Francis Duck of the British Medical Ultrasound Society will chair a discussion of the results at the international meeting of ultrasound experts being held this week in Edinburgh. “When the first study suggesting a link came out, it was possible to ignore it, but now this is the third,” he said. “What it demonstrates is the need to investigate the link further, and to look at possible mechanisms.”
Dr Duck cautioned, however, that ultrasound scanning has saved the lives of countless babies: “This research must be seen in context, and it should not deter anyone from having an antenatal scan.”
Beverley Beech, the chairman of the Association for Improvements in Maternity Services, criticized doctors for insisting for years that ultrasound was totally safe.
“I am not sure at all that the benefits of ultrasound scans outweigh the downsides,” said Ms Beech. “We should be advising women to think very, very carefully before they have scans at all.”