Sonogram Accuracy: Understanding Potential Errors

Question
Halfway into her pregnancy, my friend's doctor told her she was having a girl. Birth happens and out came a boy.

Dr. Ravichandran: Aren't the new sonogram technologies supposed to eliminate those gender mixups?

D

Answer
Sonogram is a very operator dependent technique. Therefore the results are very much dependent on the expertise and experience of the operator. Secondly It is quite possible to make wrong conclusions from the sonogram although it is more often likely that a girl baby is recognized as a boy( The reason being that the umbilical cord may at times be mistaken for the penis)