During the last 5 years, five cases of Obstetric ultrasound scans were brought to the Committee of the Thai Medical Council, the Royal Thai College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Medical Ultrasonic Society of Thailand and/or the court. Three cases were of fetal anomaly misinterpretations. The fourth one was reported no fetal anomaly but upper and lower extremities on one side were missing.Twelve million Australian dollars are requested. The last case, a 35 year old woman developed vaginal bleeding at 10 weeks of gestation, transvaginal scanning showed a live fetus but the patient aborted a few hours later. The couple sued on the ground that this procedure caused the abortion. The author was requested to be the witness of the last two cases.
Those mainly involved, are clinicians, the patients and their family and sonologists. To prevent lawsuit, clinicians have to provide a good counseling to build up a good relationship between doctor and patient before scanning to be done. This counseling should be done by sonologist as well. Information on ultrasound is provided as needed. Prenatal informed consent should be done. The report should be noted on what have been done, sonologist should also explain to the patient on what is done. Finally, the patient should be told on what has been seen and notified on what have not been scanned in the routine scanning. In case of misdiagnosis or wrong interpretation, sonologist or clinician must approach the patient and her family in trying to solve the problem.