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NeoReviews Vol.8 No.5 2007 e195
© 2007 American Academy of Pediatrics

Historical Perspectives

Perinatal Profiles: Ian Donald and Obstetric Diagnostic Ultrasound

The first 300 words of the full text of this article appear below.

	Introduction

 
One of the things that helps prospective parents to truly understand that they soon will become parents is an ultrasonography scan of the mother's abdomen, which provides a visual image of the fetus – THEIR BABY. This moment of revelation is a comparatively recent development in obstetrics. Less than 50 years ago, the fetus was assessed largely by the palpating hands of the obstetrician.

	Introduction of Ultrasonography Investigations

 
In 1958, Professor Ian Donald (Regius Professor of Midwifery at the University of Glasgow) and his colleagues John MacVicar (an obstetrician) and Tom Brown (an engineer) published a paper in The Lancet entitled "Investigation of Abdominal Masses by Pulsed Ultrasound." This article described their experience with 100 patients and included 12 illustrations of various gynecologic disorders (eg, ovarian cysts, fibroids) as well as demonstration of obstetric findings such as the fetal skull at 34 weeks' gestation, "hydramnios" (polyhydramnios), and twins in breech presentation. These "B-scope" images were somewhat "grainy" and indistinct compared with today's images, but this was almost certainly the start of a revolution in obstetrics, even if it took many years before most obstetricians were persuaded of the usefulness of such imaging.

It is worth noting that when a future Scottish Professor of Obstetrics visited the United States in 1964 and inquired about interest in ultrasonography diagnosis, he was told to forget it (!) and warned that it was "just a dream of a mad, red-headed Scotsman" that had no future. This characterization of Ian Donald was probably not limited to the United States. Recollections of another Scottish obstetrician indicate that even by the early 1970s, Glasgow was a "divided city." There were two Professors of Obstetrics and Gynecology in two different institutions in Glasgow, and while Ian Donald was enthusiastically promoting the use of ultrasonography in obstetric diagnosis, his counterpart ("the other professor" . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Alistair G.S. Philip, MD, FRCPE^*

^* Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatal and Developmental Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Palo Alto, Calif

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