Baby Insight
Photogenic - Images from elective
ultrasounds. The procedure is
becoming more popular but has
detractors.
Posted on 09/23/2004 5:57:50 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Baby Insight
Photogenic - Images from elective
ultrasounds. The procedure is
becoming more popular but has
detractors.
IT'S a rite of passage for many expectant parents: baby's first ultrasound. The fuzzy images of the fetus, produced during an examination in an obstetrician's office, are prized by couples, passed around proudly among friends and relatives.
Now, trying to capitalize on this phenomenon, a number of companies are selling elective ultrasounds that have little to do with neonatal health. The services, often in small offices or shopping malls, amount to fetal photo studios and use newer 3-D ultrasound technology to produce more realistic images than conventional machines.
Parents-to-be typically pay from about $80 for a short ultrasound session primarily to determine the fetus's sex to $300 for a half-hour session that is recorded on a videocassette or DVD and includes color photos.
While medical professionals warn of potential health risks from unnecessary ultrasounds, those who offer the elective examinations say they are safe and fulfill a need.
"Women love it," said Matt Evans, a lawyer, who started his company, Baby Insight (baby -insight.com), about a year and a half ago. "They get to see their baby and have an emotional experience with their baby."
Mr. Evans said his technicians have performed more than 2,000 ultrasounds at the company's only location, in Potomac, Md. Baby Insight's highest-priced package, for $260, includes a video with background music, one 8-by-10, two 5-by-7, and 10 wallet-size color photos, four announcement cards and a chance for friends and family members to view the ultrasound images as they are produced on a large screen in the company's theater room.
Mr. Evans said his employees tell customers that the ultrasounds are not meant to be a substitute for a doctor's exam.
Shirlesa Glaspie, 24, of Lanham, Md., underwent an ultrasound at Baby Insight late last month, when she was about 30 weeks pregnant (at its Web site, the company recommends the procedure be performed between 28 and 32 weeks for the "cutest" results). Ms. Glaspie said the images, while a bit "scary," have made the experience much more real.
"He's yawning, he sticks his tongue out, he smiles," she said. "It gives you a realization of what's going on when your stomach is moving around and bouncing around."
While doctors typically conduct ultrasounds at 20 weeks (when the fetus is large enough to show abnormalities), nonmedical ultrasounds are generally performed later, when the fetus is more developed and more photogenic.
Proponents of elective ultrasounds say they can be performed at the customer's convenience in a relaxed atmosphere, and more frequently employ 3-D machines, which are not as useful for observing internal organs for diagnostic purposes but are excellent at capturing realistic still or video images of the face and body.
Linda Spillers for The New York Times
An early look Laurice Gaither undergoing an ultrasound examination by Kara Fleshner at Baby Insight in
Potomac, Md.
Linda Spillers for The New York Times
Laurice Gaither's ultrasound
produced images including the
one above.
"As the technology improves, more and more women will be wanting to see it," said Mr. Evans, who has plans to open 75 more centers nationwide by the end of 2005. "That's why we're trying to get in while the market is still undeveloped."
He has plenty of competition. Other companies offering the services include Peek-a-Boo Ultrasounds (peekabooultrasounds.com) in California; Womb With a View (wombwithaview.com) in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Texas; FetalFotos (www.fetalfotos.com) in Georgia; and Prenatal Peek (prenatalpeek.com), which has branches in North Carolina, South Carolina and California and is opening another in Hawaii, according to its Web site.
Many companies buy new or used medical equipment made by companies like General Electric, Siemens, Philips and Medison. Prices range from around $25,000 to more than $150,000.
Mr. Evans said he bought his used GE Voluson 730 from a national distributor, for $75,000. He would not name the company, in part, he acknowledged, because he feared that the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates medical equipment, might crack down on distributors.
Some doctors and federal regulators think ultrasounds performed outside the medical establishment may pose health risks. The American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine, a professional group, and the Food and Drug Administration have strongly opposed elective ultrasounds, saying that unnecessary exposure to high-frequency sound waves could be unhealthy.
"Although there are no confirmed biological effects for patients caused by exposures from present diagnostic ultrasound instruments, the possibility exists that such biological effects may be identified in the future," the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine said in a statement.
Dr. Lawrence Platt, former president of the group and a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of California at Los Angeles, said elective ultrasounds could lead to mistaken diagnoses. "What if something is wrong with the baby?" Dr. Platt said. "Do these people know what to tell you?"
He said one of his patients came in thinking her baby was healthy after a nonmedical ultrasound. Other tests revealed a rare chromosomal condition that could have led to severe retardation and death. The woman ended her pregnancy. "There's no doubt that ultrasounds have been an incredible advance for science," he said. "We need to use the technology correctly. I hate to see this trend have a negative impact on the practice."
While the Food and Drug Administration regulates the equipment, licensing of health care providers is left to individual states. For the time being the companies do not need to be licensed, and the technicians do not need to be certified.
But Dr. Daniel G. Schultz, director of the agency's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said the agency was advising states about the potential health risks of elective ultrasounds and ensuring that machines were labeled for specific medical functions. "In the end it's up to the states," he said.
So would the F.D.A. never ban such practices? "I wouldn't say never," Dr. Schultz said. "It's a gray area where our authority ends and the states' begins."
The closest step to a ban has come in the form of a bill proposed in New York to ensure that ultrasounds only be performed after a referral or order by a "licensed health care professional." The bill is now with the Senate Rules Committee. California passed legislation in late June to make elective ultrasound customers sign a waiver acknowledging that they know the F.D.A. does not approve of the practice. The legislation will take effect next year.
Mr. Evans, who asks patients to be in contact with their own doctors and hires technicians certified by the American Registry of Diagnostic Medical Sonographers, strongly disagrees with dire assessments of elective ultrasounds' health risks. There is no proof that ultrasounds are harmful, he said, and mentioned that doctors often perform numerous ultrasounds when investigating possible fetal health problems. "The F.D.A. has scared a lot of women, but from my experience women aren't worried," he said.
Marilyn Crisp, who last February opened a similar service, Womb's Window (wombswindow.com), in Wilmington, N.C., wondered whether the F.D.A. had been swayed by the persuasive voice of the medical community, which may fear that business is being taken away by independent operators.
Some doctors do not object to elective ultrasounds. Dr. Haig Yeni-Komshian, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Chevy Chase, Md., recently accompanied a patient to Baby Insight and found the practice safe, likening it to portrait work. "There's no radiation involved with ultrasounds, just high-frequency waves," Dr. Yeni-Komshian said. "As long as women are still seeing their doctors, if they want to have this done, that's fine."
But for now such companies will continue to operate under intense scrutiny from medical officials. Not that it matters to Ms. Glaspie, whose doctor told her the procedure presented no risk to her baby as long as she "didn't get one done every day." She purchased a video of the experience and has shared it with her son, her boyfriend, her parents, her brother, sister and grandmother, along with "anyone else who is interested."
"Every time we watch, it gets us more excited," she said.
Interesting that the Times did not mention that this procedure humanizes fetuses as never before...
It's definitely going to be harder for the culture of death to justify disposing of an extraneous growth down a sink or growing stem cells or growing body parts when that unimportant little growth looks as human as it does.
Yep...I'm sure Planned (non)Parenthood HATES these things turning up in malls.
I suspect that those stories about ultrasound being harmful were circulated courtesy of the abortion industry, which doesn't want women to get a closer look at that "little blob of tissue" in their womb.
This is not necessarily a good thing. Read about the links to possible brain damage with the less-invasive conventional version:
New Scientist:
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991670
England's Daily Mail:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/womenfamily.html?in_article_id=89408&in_page_id=1799
A possible respite to the concern at The Scientist:
http://www.biomedcentral.com/news/20011220/04/
We need to take certain risks to better assure our health and the health of those whom we care about. However, when a new procedure becomes more oriented toward vanity, we must reassess our stewardship ability.
Wait a minute. Wait just a doggone minute.
The fuzzy images of the fetus?
Is there anyone who actually refers to their unborn child as "the fetus"??
Why, then does the New York Times choose this word, instead of "baby" or "unborn child"?
Could it be that the New York Times has a bias -- an agenda here?
"Dr. Lawrence Platt...said one of his patients came in thinking her baby was healthy after a nonmedical ultrasound. Other tests revealed a rare chromosomal condition that could have led to severe retardation and death. The woman ended her pregnancy. "There's no doubt that ultrasounds have been an incredible advance for science," he said. "We need to use the technology correctly. I hate to see this trend have a negative impact on the practice."
Gee, Dr. Platt, do you think that if parents actually realized that their "fetuses" were really babies that they might be less inclined to abort their babies?
Yes, Dr. Platt, "this trend" would have a negative imapct on your "practice".
These are not x-rays...they are sound waves.
Yes, NARAL is going to have a COW
unviable bovine tissue mass over this!
Will colonoscopy now become ultimate pornography? Imagine Katie Kouric's live TV colonoscopy being deemed more obscene than Janet Jackson's breast flash.
Other tests revealed a rare chromosomal condition that could have led to severe retardation and death. The woman ended her pregnancy.
the ultrasound showed an apparent healthy baby...
other tests revealed a rare chromosomal condition that COULD have led to severe retardation and death...
could have and the woman was scared into ending her pregnancy...
the question is, is a retarded baby unfit for life...
i say no, but apparently it is so...
teeman
NARAL?
Do you mean the National Abortion Rights Action League?
Oooops....I mean.... NARAL (We can't mention "abortion", you know.)
And, just to obscure what NARAL is really all about, they have changed their name once more.....
They are now called NARAL Pro-Choice America.
They have gone from being proud of the fact that they are an "action league" of people who support "abortion rights" to being somewhat ashamed of any mention of "abortion" in their name, preferring instead to be thought of as being "pro-choice".
They must, I suppose, mis-use the language.
Honesty -- truth in advertising -- would put them out of business.
In particular, a puzzling link between the scans and an increase in the incidence of left-handedness was noticed.
That's just funny. And quite frankly, removes any credibility from your sources.
Let's get to the REAL reason some are opposed to this:
It "humanizes" the baby, thus their argument that abortion doesn't kill a human is thrown out the window.
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.
OK; that's it. Your scientific proof is junk. Don't have an ultrasound! You might birth a lefty!
Read his "scientific" articles. The alleged brain damage is that the kid will come out left-handed.
I understand perfectly. Thank goodness I have sufficient common sense not to believe a group of nuts just because they have the two little letters "M.D." after their names.
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