20 Week U/S Panic-Echo Focus
Just wanted to share my experience with others who may be going through a similar situation. I searched for a board on here talking about this issue and they were all old/closed so I thought I'd put a new one up. When we went for our 20 week u/s we were told there was a spot on the heart (called echo focus) which can be a "soft indicator" for down syndrome. I panicked...all I had to hear was "heart" & "downs" and I went into a tailspin of overthinking. I ended up seeing a specialist for a level 2 u/s and was told the spot that had been found in my original u/s was nothing more than some muscle tissue (completely normal) and not an echo focus at all. Apparently, with the updated technology these days things like echo focii are becoming much more common findings and most of the time end up being nothing OR are an echo focus but do not indicate down syndrome. Anybody else have this come up? I wish someone would have explained to me how common of a finding this is and how little rarely this type of finding actually indicates downs before I lost my marbles!
Re: 20 Week U/S Panic-Echo Focus
They found one on our LO heart. We go on Monday to maternal fetal medicine for a level 2 u/s. We have been told that it's just the muscle in the heart forming like yours. We were also told that it happens in about 4% of pregnancys and goes away in almost all cases.
Ive also had some bleeding off and on the whole pregnancy. So thats part of why we are going to maternal fetal medicine.
I also skipped out on the quad-screen test b/c I'm 25 and have no family history of any CF or Trist21. That was another reason I panicked so much. I will say it was kind of nice having the 2nd level U/S done. Mainly because they look at the baby in so much more detail so you can be reassured about any other problems the 20 week u/s could have missed and also because we got to see our little man again
They told me that as well (need 2 markers for a higher risk for DS). Also, 2 markers does not mean 100% that it is DS so stay positive, I'm sure everything will be fine! I'm not sure if 2nd level u/s and antatomy scan are the same but it was about 40 mins of a u/s tech taking detailed shots of the baby (particularly the heart since that is where they thought our echo focus was). They also did a lot more measuring and some 3D images. I know they especially looked for other indicators (femur length, hand creases, nasal bone development, toe measurements/placement, etc) but nothing was out of the ordinary.
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