Scientists have recently warned that a great deal of routine pregnancy exams fail to trace breech babies in the womb, which leads to extremely difficult birth process and even other serious complications. Sometimes the abnormal position of the baby prevents delivery from taking place and special medical measures should be taken up.

The normal position of the baby in the uterus is with the head down. However, there are babies that lie abnormally, like with foot first or breech. The sad news is that the routine pregnancy exam is not able to detect all these abnormal positions of the babies. This type of tests fails to track down 25% - 30% of such cases. This is why British Medical Journal states that ultrasound tests for pregnant women may be needed.

"The main issues associated with the introduction of routine ultrasound are the availability of ultrasound machines, resources and people adequately skilled in conducting the scans in each clinical setting," co-author of the study, Natasha Nassar said.

Scientists from the University of Sydney investigated the baby position in 1633 pregnant women. They were in their 35th and 37th week when the exam was performed by a doctor that used the common method of examining the belly of the future mothers. This method consists in simply touching and palpating the woman's belly.

Afterwards, ultrasound tests were carried out. When comparing the results of the two pregnancy control methods, researchers found that palpating succeeded in detecting 70% of the abnormal cases in which babies were not in the standard, head down position. However, doctors failed to detect 30% of the possibly problematic deliveries.

"It is possible that some babies in breech position are missed and this reinforces the need to use information from this research to inform current education and training of midwives and obstetricians," Sue Macdonald of the Royal College of Midwives noted.