Transabdominal uterine arteries Doppler at 12-14th

[caryn]

Abnormal Doppler results at 12-14th week examination were associated with intra uterine growth retardation, fetal death/spontaneous abortion and small for gestational age birth... This study indicates that early evaluation of arterial uterine RI and presence of notches may be predictive of low birth weight and intra uterine growth retardation in a high risk population.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19713028

In this study they only enrolled women with a history of risk factors for placental problems. If the UAD was abnormal at 12-14 weeks, that was correlated to bad outcomes. I haven't pulled the full-text yet, but it looks like they also ran a Doppler at 20-24 weeks and abnormal readings *weren't* predictive. (I say this because they say, in the title, that they also looked at that population.) So this is yet another study suggesting that a UAD is at least weakly predictive in the population of high-risk women.

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[beth11]

I'm not familiar with this. . . how is the test conducted? In other words, how do I make sure that I'm being checked for this? :)

[caryn]

They do an ultrasound of the uterine arteries, and check them for signs that blood flow isn't as robust as it is on average at that gestational age. I've never had one, but a lot of our posters have!

[missgamecock]

I had one with Cate at 12 and 18 weeks. Both mine were bad. I had notching in the right uterine artery. It was really wierd because my ob is a very laid back kind of guy. We'll worry about it when we cross that bridge. When he got my peri's report and the artery report, he said ok this is the deal. You will get pe based on these results and your history. You have a 100% chance. So this is what we are going to do. Then he went into the testing that I needed to have done and how they would be watching me like a hawk. It was just wierd because of how he normally is. This time he was like ok you are going to get it so let's deal with that bridge. They did take Cate asap as soon as I got sick.


It is done via abdominal US. You can hear and see the bloodflow through the arteries. The notch has a different sound to it that you know doesn't sound right when you hear it. For me it was like a pause in the bloodflow. You can see the notching on an US. It looks different.


I used to have a really good website that actually had US pics and what they looked like with the bloodflow. That must have been on my old job's computer as I don't see it on my favorites for my home laptop.