CEUS Safely Assesses Suspected Liver Tumors in Pregnant Women

CEUS uses injectable suspensions of microscopic bubbles known as ultrasound contrast agents to enhance conventional ultrasound images and provide reliable, real-time images in a variety of clinical settings. Ultrasound contrast agents are approved throughout much of the world for imaging adults and children, but they are not yet approved for imaging pregnant women.

“CEUS was safely performed on all of the pregnant women without adverse fetal or maternal events,” according to Professor Dirk-Andre Clevert, who led the study and described the results Thursday at the 34^th annual “International Bubble Conference,” a medical conference in Chicago devoted to developments and trends in the CEUS field.

“In a few cases, CEUS quickly showed that immediate therapy was required,” he added.

The retrospective study used CEUS to evaluate liver lesions of unknown origin in six pregnant women.

“CEUS is a very safe and useful imaging modality, and was extremely well tolerated by our pregnant patients,” Professor Clevert said.

“By comparison, CT and MRI scans can raise concerns during pregnancy due to harmful ionizing radiation and cerebral gadolinium deposition, respectively,” he added.

Ultrasound contrast agents are used to help diagnose cancers throughout the body, to monitor chronic diseases and the effectiveness of therapy, and to diagnose heart disease and other serious medical conditions.

ABOUT ICUS:

The International Contrast Ultrasound Society (ICUS) is an international medical society dedicated to advancing the appropriate use of contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) to improve patient care. ICUS members include physicians, scientists, and other ultrasound imaging professionals around the world. For more information about ICUS, please visit www.icus-society.org.

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