Ultrasound safety?

Question

I know this is probably out there... but does anyone have any literature or any thoughts from their OB about the safety of ultrasounds? I am asking because we sometimes play around with the one on our unit.. 😳 I asked one of our cardiologists who happened to see us messing around and he said that when ultrasounds came out everyone got one and everyone still does - so whether they have any impact at all hasn’t been studied well. Information online seems mixed...
Has anyone’s OB mentioned this? Once I get further along I’m going to be soo tempted to ‘just take a quick peak’ 😬

Answer

I worked in ultrasound technology for a long time for GE Healthcare. I’m not a dr, but we went through a LOT of safety training (in our division we repaired ultrasound probes and tested them before returning them to the hospital/ drs office they belonged to). 
There doesn’t appear to be any safety concerns (and there is no radiation emitted) during an imaging scan. There is however, an issue with turning on the Doppler/ sound on an IMAGING probe during a scan. This function will heat up the amniotic fluid, and during early pregnancy this is not safe. The little hand-held NON-IMAGING Doppler used at the dr’s or at home is completely safe and does not have this same issue. It only applies to an IMAGING probe being used in Doppler/sound mode.  
Additionally, because ultrasound emits very high frequency sound waves, and the younger a person is the higher sound waves they can hear- some think that a baby in utero may be bothered by the high pitched sound emitted from the probe. This is definitely just a theory, but just something to think about. 
I would say, if you aren’t a trained ultrasound tech, you may not want to play around with it. There’s a lot that goes into generating an image with ultrasound (depth, penetration, saturation, etc) and techs are trained to be able to do it quickly to limit exposure. If would take someone I trained a lot longer to play around and get an image, which may be too much time for your baby.  As with any medical technology, even if it has shown to be “safe” in a clinical setting, we always want to limit our exposure.

Answer

I highly recommend the pregnancy podcast, she goes over so many topics and shares all the research she can find on each. She has an episode on ultrasounds. The general conclusion was they are generally thought to be safe although there were 1-2 studies that found a lot of exposure (I believe one was on humans and the other on chickens?) can cause some issues. Basically the small handful they do in most pregnancies should be fine, but I wouldn't go out of my way to do it all the time without the supervision of a professional.
https://pregnancypodcast.com/episode17/

Answer

my Ob said there is no risk with ultrasounds.

Ultrasound safety?

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