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CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association Journal logoLink to CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association Journal
. 1993 Nov 15;149(10):1435–1440.

Case-control study of prenatal ultrasonography exposure in children with delayed speech.

J D Campbell 1, R W Elford 1, R F Brant 1
PMCID: PMC1485930  PMID: 8221427

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether there is an association between prenatal ultrasound exposure and delayed speech in children. DESIGN: Case-control study. SETTING: Network of community physicians affiliated with the Primary Care Research Unit, University of Calgary. SUBJECTS: Thirty-four practitioners identified 72 children aged 24 to 100 months who had undergone a formal speech-language evaluation and were found to have delayed speech of unknown cause by a speech-language pathologist. For each case subject the practitioners found two control subjects matched for sex, date of birth, sibling birth order and associated health problems. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Rates of prenatal ultrasound exposure and delayed speech. RESULTS: The children with delayed speech had a higher rate of ultrasound exposure than the control subjects. The findings suggest that a child with delayed speech is about twice as likely as a child without delayed speech to have been exposed to prenatal ultrasound waves (odds ratio 2.8, 95% confidence limit 1.5 to 5.3; p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: An association between prenatal ultrasonography exposure and delayed speech was found. If there is no obvious clinical indication for diagnostic in-utero ultrasonography, physicians might be wise to caution their patients about the vulnerability of the fetus to noxious agents.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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