Growing rates of obesity among pregnant women may hamper efforts to use ultra-sound to monitor the health of babies, researchers have warned.
As many as 60% of serious heart defects may not be detected by ultra-sound scanning, according to the Swedish study.
The findings come from an analysis of more than 21,000 scans in the south-east of Sweden, where pregnant women are offered two scans in the first six months of pregnancy.
Few defects were found in initial scans but in the second scans, some 37% of defects were found, the researcher Eric Hildebrand reports.
They found that 13% of the mothers were obese – suggesting that this affected the quality of scans in many of those with high risk pregnancies.
Dr Hildebrand, of the Linköping University Hospital Women’s Clinic, calls for improved training for midwives in interpreting heart images – and the use of colour Doppler to depict blood flow in the heart.
He has reported his findings in a university thesis.
Dr Hildebrand said: “The lives of children born with serious heart defects are in constant danger; some of them need immediate operations or medical treatment."
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