Should I be worried that my baby's umbilical cord has only 1 artery instead of 2? скачать в хорошем качестве

Should I be worried that my baby's umbilical cord has only 1 artery instead of 2?

The question, what to do with an incidental finding of single umbilical artery at the time of a mid-trimester fetal ultrasound, is a good one. And for that matter, there are quite a number of other somewhat similar ultrasound findings that might be very disturbing to a couple. So I like to remind couples that many such findings by ultrasound are of fairly limited clinical importance. They're not of no clinical importance, but they don't carry the grave implications that couples may immediately think. Single umbilical artery is one such finding, and so it's a good example. The finding of one rather than two arteries in the umbilical cord of the fetus is probably the single most common vascular abnormality in man. It usually pans out to not mean anything, and that's what is important to recall. No question that single umbilical artery is associated with an increased risk of certain problems, but we're talking about relatively small magnitude increased risks, so that the majority of babies with a single umbilical artery will be normal at birth. There are some things that we do to be sure of that on the way to delivery, that's our job. But I think couples need to recall that infrequently is single umbilical artery actually linked to a major medical problem.