Last night, I learned that a good friend of mine (my next-door neighbor from childhood) is going through a big scare. She's 27 weeks pregnant and learned that one of her baby girl's ventricles is measuring a little large, and the other, a little small. When I first heard there was an issue, I had no details, and frankly, found her explanation reassuring.
But she's not reassured at all, and doing what we all do, found even less reassurance in her online, maniacal searches. I told her to cease and desist. I have an extensive background in online medical reasearch without the qualifying degrees and a whole army of minions who are similiarly qualified. So I told her to let us do the searching and the anecdote sharing and I'd report back to her with sifted, honest feedback.
She has a month to go before another scan, and we all know how impossibly long that can be.
Here are the details:
"... she has "mild ventriculomegaly." Her left ventricle is measuring at 10.2mm, which he calls a "variant of normal" since anything under 10mm is statistically normal. He measured the right ventricle at 6mm. He seemed satisfied that it was within the normal range, but I am not sure if the disparity between the two means anything. Apparently, the ventricles drain fluid from the brain to the spinal canal and the enlarged one means that hers is not draining properly. He said they do not even worry unless the measurement is over 15mm, at which point we would talk to a pediatric neurologist. He said at 20mm, it is "overt hydrocephalus" or "water on the brain." He said this has nothing to do with me and there is nothing I can do to make it better or worse. He also said that chances are lots of babies have this type of measurement at some point, but it starts going back down around 32 weeks and is never noticed by anyone. He also promised me that in over 50,000 sonograms, he has never seen a measurement like this turn into something serious past 24 weeks and I am at almost 27 weeks."
Do you know anything about this? Any stories to share? Any relevant articles? Please come forth and share. Pay it forward.
