With a number of alarming stories doing the rounds in recent times, documenting misdiagnosed miscarriages, it’s not hard to see why medical experts are reconsidering medical guidelines.

 

Doctors in the UK are being advised to wait longer before diagnosing miscarriages, in order to prevent the risk of ending a pregnancy that could have turned out to be viable.

 

Experts behind a study published in the BMJ journal are calling for doctors to update their miscarriage protocol, to give pregnant women a second ultrasound scan two weeks after the first. The second scan is being advised for instances where the gestational sac appears small in the ultrasound.

 

As part of the study, a team of experts from Imperial College looked at the outcomes for almost 3,000 women who had arrived at a NHS hospital with bleeding or pain, and proceeded to have a scan that questioned the viability of the pregnancy going forward.

 

 

The researchers found that 19 out of 549 pregnancies would have been misdiagnosed as unviable if the current guidelines had been followed and a second scan had not been carried out two weeks later.

 

Currently, guidelines call for a second scan to be carried out if the gestational sac is over 25mm, however some doctors will offer a second scan for a smaller pregnancy.

 

Commenting on the study findings, lead author Tom Bourne said: “Women should be able to rely on a diagnosis of miscarriage. It’s an area of medicine where the highest levels of caution are warranted. Just one misdiagnosis of miscarriage is too many.”

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