Ultrasound

  The Virginia General Assembly is moving forward with a watered-down version of a controversial abortion bill, despite attracting national ire and ridicule because it would have required a woman to have an ultrasound probe inserted into her vagina before undergoing an abortion. In the new version of the bill, doctors would still have to perform an external ultrasound, but women would be allowed to refuse the more invasive procedure, though doctors must still offer to perform it. The national attention has come as an embarrassment to Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell, who has been touted as a possible GOP vice presidential nominee, and has found Republicans embroiled in another fight over women's healthcare.

madison, wis. -- What if your doctor could swipe a wand over your neck and reveal whether you have hidden heart disease? That is now possible in places other than the sick bay of the starship Enterprise. Miniature ultrasound machines are starting to make their way into ordinary doctors' offices, where they may someday be as common as stethoscopes and electrocardiographs. A pocket-sized one weighing less than 2 pounds hit the market last week.

Susan Beane, a 45-year-old mother of two, had undergone regular mammograms for five years. Each time, she got a clean bill of health. But nine months after her most recent routine screening, she felt a lump. A follow-up mammogram failed to produce a picture of the growth. It wasn't until Beane underwent an ultrasound that the radiologist found the 1.6-centimeter tumor that was eventually determined to be cancer. The disease had spread to at least one of her lymph nodes.

Shelly Bunker's due date is months away, but last week in an upscale shopping mall office, tucked among the hair salons and art galleries, she watched her baby boy appear to smile, yawn and wave from inside her womb. "You can kind of see his personality too," said the beaming father, Ben Bunker, watching the image of his unborn son captured by a bath of ultrasound waves. "He's pretty active."

Last year Dave Wilkinson asked God for guidance. He wanted to know what he could do to better fight abortion. Wilkinson, an evangelical pastor, runs three Ventura County pregnancy clinics that encourage women to choose alternatives to the procedure. He believes the prevalence of abortion is the biggest test Christians face. "It's probably one of the things that American Christians are going to have to stand before God and answer for," Wilkinson said. "He will say, 'You, as Americans, what did you do to fight abortion?

When Patti was pregnant four years ago, her obstetrician recommended that she have a fetal ultrasound at a nearby radiological center in Newport Beach. This year, when Patti was expecting her second child and needed another ultrasound, the obstetrician offered the test in his office. To Patti, the second test was more comfortable and convenient. But, according to some health experts, the practice raises uncomfortable questions: * Are tests offered in a doctor's office substandard in quality?

An Oklahoma judge on Tuesday overturned a state law that required women seeking an abortion to receive an ultrasound and a doctor's description of the fetus. Oklahoma County District Judge Vicki Robertson said the law violated constitutional requirements that a legislative measure deal only with one subject. She did not rule on the validity of the ultrasound provisions. Her ruling also overturned provisions in the law that allowed doctors and other healthcare providers to refuse to take part in an abortion for moral or religious reasons, required certain signs to be placed in clinics where abortions are performed, and prohibited wrongful-life lawsuits arguing that a disabled child would have been better off aborted.

Apainless ultrasound drug-delivery system may soon replace the dreaded hypodermic needle in many instances. That could be a real shot in the arm for millions of people--such as diabetics who require frequent injections of insulin--for whom syringes are an unending torment that also carry the risk of infection. For years, scientists have sought non-invasive ways of getting crucial drugs to diffuse across the skin and into the bloodstream.

The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved a new device that can diagnose osteoporosis in 10 seconds by scanning a person's heel using ultrasound, a new technology that is dramatically faster and considerably less expensive than the equipment and procedure now in use.

Here's a question that's not being asked in the healthcare debate: How much medical care do we want in our lives? It's something we should be discussing. Start with the two life events we all experience, birth and death. My profession has gotten pretty good at terrifying (and operating on) pregnant women during what should be one of the greatest experiences in life. And we are equally proficient at dragging the elderly through all sorts of misery on the road to death. Too harsh, you say?