A new report in the United Kingdom revealed that babies who did not have any congenital abnormality, but were stillborn could have been saved by better prenatal care.
Data shows that one in three stillborn babies dies when the gestation has reached full term and at least 1,000 stillbirths have been recorded in the UK every year. These findings, which are among the worst safety records in the developed world, mark the little progress in antenatal care for the past 15 years, experts said.
A team of obstetricians, pathologists, midwives, academics and charity representatives known as Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk Through Audits and Confidential Enquiries Across the UK (MBRRACE-UK) conducted a national confidential enquiry and found that 60 percent of stillbirths could have been avoided if proper guidance was followed by hospitals.
The experts reviewed in detail about 133 stillbirth cases in 2013. They discovered that half of the normally-formed singleton stillbirths had at least one aspect of antenatal care that required improvement and might have made a difference in the outcome.
The report said that two-thirds of pregnant women who had high risks of developing diabetes in pregnancy were not offered testing, and that guidelines for screening and monitoring of the growth of the baby were also not followed by the medical staff.
Even more alarming, experts said, was the fact that almost half of the women contacted their maternity units to say that the movement of the baby in their womb had slowed, changed or stopped completely. In half of these cases, there were missed opportunities to save the baby as there was a lack in investigation, a failure to respond properly to the cases or a misinterpretation of the baby's heart traces.
Judith Abela of Sands, a charity supporting parents whose babies were stillborn, said that it was worrying how a baby's poor growth is unable to be spotted by simple checks and that the concerns of pregnant women about their baby's movements are not being taken seriously.
Regarding documentation, researchers said that internal reviews were made in only a quarter of the stillbirth cases, which again, misses opportunities to learn from the cases and improve services.
"Giving birth to a stillborn baby is heartbreaking. The report from MBRRACE-UK indicates that opportunities to prevent this may be being missed," said Neena Modi, a professor at the Royal College of Pediatrics and Child Health.
Meanwhile, the MBRRACE-UK report suggested that several actions should be taken to reduce the cases of stillbirth. Among these actions is the implementation of national guidance involving identification and screening of women who are at risk for diabetes developed due to pregnancy; routine measurement of the baby's growth; standardized multidisciplinary review of all stillbirth cases; and management of reduced fetal movements as well as identification of risk factors.
Photo : Quinn Dombrowski | Flickr
