40% abnormalities are seen around 12-14 weeks. Learn the importance of the first and second-trimester ultrasound scans
Most important. One of the most important uses of ultrasound is to find fetal abnormalities. And, as far as a single scan is concerned, a scan around 20 weeks will pick up almost 80 to 90% of all fetal abnormalities. Now, that’s a very good figure, it goes up to about 95% at 23 weeks. But you know, we cannot do a scan every week to justify that, but a standard 20 weeks will pick up most of the abnormalities, which are usually seen in our population.
It’s extremely important, to have a very reliable scan at that time. Because, you know, I mean the scan takes time, it takes effort and every organ has to be seen. Some organs are like in the front of the screen, some are either on the posterior aspect, so we will not be able to see them. So the patient has to really wait and be patient for the baby to turn into its various, acquisitions, and then take a call.
A hurried scan, which spends around a five-minute scan or a 10-minute scan, will never do the job. It has to be around 30 minutes at least, but it can go on for hours. Okay. Now we should not just wait for all that long to see that. Normally these can be seen at 18 to 20 weeks, almost 40% of abnormalities can be seen at 12 to 13 weeks.
So that’s a very good time. It’s almost half the abnormalities that can be seen at that time. So that should also be a regular screening at that time in all patients. However, because of logistics, the government may say that, okay, we need a scan on via 20 weeks, but that’s not the normal standard.
