THE FINDINGS of a review set up last June to investigate cases where women with viable pregnancies were wrongly told after ultrasound scans at hospitals across the State that they had miscarried are to be published today.
The national review, which investigated 24 cases of misdiagnosed miscarriage over the past five years, was instigated after Melissa Redmond from Donabate, Co Dublin, revealed she was prescribed an abortifacient – a drug that causes abortion – after an initial scan at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, in July 2009 showed no foetal heartbeat.
Before taking the drugs and by following her own gut instinct, she sought another scan from her GP, who discovered the baby was alive.
A review of her case, before the national review got under way, found the scanner used in her misdiagnosis to be inadequate but it continued to be used for another six months. The images it produced “were grainy and of poor resolution” and “not adequate to accurately assess early pregnancies and their complications”.
Guidelines for ultrasound diagnosis of early pregnancy miscarriage were issued to all hospitals earlier this year.
They stated that training should be provided for sonographers in both transabdominal and transvaginal ultrasound and that ultrasound machines should be of good quality and should be regularly maintained, serviced and checked for safety.
It emerged last September that a number of out-of-date ultrasound scanners were still being used at hospitals in the northeast despite a warning to the HSE the previous March that they required urgent replacement.
The 24 women whose cases were included in the review are to be briefed before the HSE publishes its report this afternoon.
The review group was chaired by Prof William Ledger, head of the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Sheffield.