ULTRASONOGRAPHIC DETECTION OF A LIVE FETUS IN RECURRENT SPONTANEOUS-ABORTION DURING THE 1ST TRIMESTER

To examine whether recurrent spontaneous abortion (RSA) can be disting uished from repeated sporadic spontaneous abortion, the clinical cours e of 38 cases with three or more consecutive and unexplained first tri mester RSAs were retrospectively investigated in this study. For compa rison with controls, the clinical course was examined of 38 fertile fe males, who had had sporadic abortions. In 19 (50%) RSAs and 6 (16%) co ntrols, fetal cardiac activity was demonstrated by ultrasound during t he course of pregnancy. The rate of detection of live fetus during pre gnancy or at 8 weeks +/- 7 days gestation, was significantly greater i n the RSA group compared to the control. The rate of vaginal bleeding before spontaneous abortion was significantly less in the RSA group th an in the control group. There was no difference between the two group s in age or gestational age at spontaneous abortion. The patients with RSA were all examined for anti-phospholipid antibodies in their sera and these were detected in eight of them. However, there was no differ ence in the rate of positive fetal cardiac activity between the RSA pa tients who tested positive or negative for antibody. These results rev eal that the clinical course of RSA is very different from the course of sporadic abortion. Although sporadic abortion is a common complicat ion of pregnancy, RSA is not a random repeated abortion, but rather a separate disease from sporadic abortion in normal fertile females.