Unregistered sonographers working in baby scan clinics on the UK’s high streets are sometimes giving poor or potentially dangerous advice to pregnant women, the Society of Radiographers has warned.1
The professional body and trade union said that its members had seen examples of missed health problems, misdiagnosed conditions, and healthy fetuses misdiagnosed as dead or malformed. It is calling for a change in the law so that only people who have completed approved qualifications in sonography and are registered with the appropriate regulatory body can be allowed to call themselves a sonographer.
Individual sonographers can decide to join the register of clinical technologists, but this is voluntary. Pregnant women can also ask private clinics whether they have been registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and when they were last inspected.
Private ultrasound clinics have sprung up across UK high streets in recent years offering souvenir scans, including “4D bonding scans” that create a moving 3D video of an unborn baby.
But experts have warned that such scanning can give pregnant …
