Over 2,000 babies are born in the UK every year with a potentially
life-threatening critical congenital heart defect. Almost 60% of these babies
will not be identified before birth and following birth almost half will
present with serious illness before the diagnosis is made. A third of these
babies will be sent home without a diagnosis, many of these babies will
become seriously unwell and sadly some of them will die. My name is Professor
Andrew Ewer, I'm Professor of Neonatal Medicine at the University of Birmingham
and I've spent the last 10 years developing a technique which can
increase the detection of these babies to over 90%. The screening tests we
developed involves the use of the machine called a Pulse Oximeter. Pulse Oximeters
are very common in hospitals they're widely used to simply and
non-invasively measure the levels of oxygen in the body, a sensor is placed on
a finger or in the baby's case on the hand or a foot and the oxygen levels can
be measured. We know that in babies with critical
congenital heart defects most of the babies will have slightly lower oxygen
levels are normal and the machine will pick this up. Once these babies have been
identified we can investigate them further to look for critical heart
defects. We also pick up babies with other conditions that lead to low oxygen
levels such as breathing problems and infections. We know that if we introduce
pulse oximetry and we have done work and on studies involving over
half a million patients that this test is very consistent and increases the
detection rate of critical congenital heart defects to over 90%. In addition we
pick up other conditions which may be equally important. Our test has been
adopted now in the United States and currently every baby born in the United
States over 4 million babies a year receive this test. In the UK at the
moment about half of the hospitals are currently using the test to screen babies so
that means half are not. Whether or not all babies in the UK receive this test
depends on the National Screening Committee. The National Screening
Committee in the UK decide on all screening tests for babies and recently
they reviewed the evidence for pulse oximetry screening and decided not to
introduce the test. This is very disappointing but importantly the
national screening committee have announced a public consultation in which
parents, patients and health professionals can share their views on
pulse oximetry screening. I think this is really important and it's a great
opportunity for us to influence a decision. Why does the National Screening
Committee think that pulse oximetry screening is not a good idea. They're
mainly concerned about a lack of evidence that pulse oximetry improves
outcomes. Although for heart defects the evidence that it improves the outcome is
overwhelmingly demonstrated in the study from the United States, for the other
conditions - breathing problems and infections it's less clear whether
there's a benefit and because of this the National Screening Committee
convened a work group of expert neonatologists and other health
professionals to debate the pros and cons of screening for these conditions.
The findings of that committee can be found on on the National Screening
Committee website but essentially they decided that overall the benefits of
pulse oximetry screening outweighed the potential harms for these important
conditions. When we talk about harms in screening terms what we mean is things
like delay discharge, parental anxiety
unnecessary tests and investigations and unnecessary treatment. These are all
really important things to consider but in our analysis of the UK data we
estimate that less than one in a thousand babies screened will have
unnecessary tests and investigations and these babies discharges will be delayed by
less than 12 hours. Importantly three in a thousand will have a potentially
important condition diagnosed and these babies can be treated earlier thereby
improving their chances of earlier discharge and less, fewer complications.
All the details and more can be found on our website the details of which are
you'll see below. I urge you to think about this if you have a have, having a
baby and you're worried about the test if you, if you, if you, have had a baby and
your baby had the test. If you had a baby and your baby had a heart defect that was
missed. What do you views on this test do you
think it's important do you think the National Screening Committee should
reconsider its decision? If you do I urge you to go to their website the
details of which can be found on our website and contribute to the national
consultation. It's really important and I've passionately believed that we have
an opportunity to make them reconsider their decision and potentially save more
babies lives, thank you .