Emily and her daughter
DailyMail: Hundreds of women could have needlessly aborted their healthy babies because hospital staff failed to carry out proper pregnancy scans.
It was revealed that staff at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff were only using one type of pregnancy scan on expectant mothers, which can lead to false diagnoses of miscarriage.
The error, which breaches NHS guidelines, was only discovered after pregnant Emily Wheatley almost aborted her daughter on false medical advice.
Ms. Wheatley, 31, was told she had suffered a ’silent miscarriage’ and needed to deliver her dead baby, but found out that unborn Ella, now eight months old, was still alive when she had a second scan at another hospital.
She went for an ultrasound scan at the hospital when she was nine weeks pregnant and was told the heartbreaking news that her baby had died. Nurses recommended a ‘uterine evacuation’ procedure to remove the child, whom they thought was dead.
But when she went to Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny – closer to her home in Monmouth, South Wales, nurses carried out a ‘transvaginal scan’, which involved an instrument being put inside her – and proved that her baby still had a hearbeat.
After she discovered the blunder, Ms. Wheatley complained and the Ombudsman for Wales launched an investigation, which has now revealed that the hospital could have been aborting healthy babies by mistake for up to five years.
A damning report into the hospital’s conduct by Ombudsman Peter Tyndall today concluded that the hospital had botched Ms. Whealtey’s scan. It also found that the hospital had not been following NHS guidelines, which would have prevented the false diagnosis, since as long ago as 2007.
According to the current rules, at least two different types of pregnancy scan have to be given before nurses can be certain that a miscarriage has occurred.
But the report said it was likely that staff were ‘systematically failing’ to carry out the procedure properly – which could have led to as many as 600 women a year wrongly having their babies aborted.
In response, the hospital has set up a helpline for women who fear they may have lost their baby for no good reason.
After the report was released, Ms. Wheatley said: ‘To be told that I’d miscarried was a real shock – I was so looking forward to being a mom for the first time. They said I’d had a silent miscarriage which has no symptoms and that I needed a procedure to remove the baby. ‘But I went to another hospital closer to my home and my family to have it done. But before they carried it out they did a different type of scan on me and found a heartbeat. When I saw the baby clearly on the screen, I couldn’t really believe that the University Hospital of Wales had got it wrong. I feel angry at the decision to not follow a simple process which could have prevented this misdiagnosis.’
‘It’s just unbelievable that there are potentially other women out there who have been diagnosed with having a silent miscarriage. And they potentially have got rid of healthy babies – that frightens me. Maybe hundreds of babies have been lost because of their decision making, which is unthinkable.’
The University Hospital of Wales deliver around 6,000 babies every year with between 600 and 1,200 women having a miscarriage. It is impossible to say for sure how many of these miscarriages were diagnosed on the basis of the potentially incorrect scans.
But as many as 600 abortions at the hospital every year were ‘assisted’, which means the blunders in diagnosis could have led to mistakes being made, and healthy babies being killed.
In his conclusion, Mr. Tyndall said other women would ‘clearly’ have been affected by the failings. He said: ‘Were it not for the fortunate circumstance of this woman seeking her post-miscarriage care at an alternativ hospital it seems likely that these failings would have resulted in the medical termination of a healthy, viable pregnancy.’
‘The clinical practices of midwives at the University Hospital of Wales in respect of the diagnosis of early miscarriages have been potentially flawed. I expect women who have been diagnosed with early miscarriages and subsequently underwent uterine evacuation will find this extremely disturbing. Emily suffers from polycystic ovary syndrome and endometriosis meaning the chances of her conceiving naturally were ‘very, very slim’.
After becoming pregnant she given a Doppler Ultrasound and a transabdominal scan where a sensor is moved across the stomach. Based on the results of the tests nurses said her baby was dead.
That test discovered the fetal heartbeat which had been missed by the “incompetence” of staff at the other hospital just 30 miles away.
The guidelines of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which are followed by the NHS, state all three tests should be carried out to prevent the misdiagnosis of early pregnancy loss.
The report found the failure to give Emily all three scans was a “fundamental error” which had been “potentially dangerous”.
The Ombudsman has called for a review of midwife sonographers’ competency at the hospital.
Dr. George Findlay of the Cardiff and Vale Health Board, which runs the hospital, admitted that Ms. Wheatley had been ‘let down’.
He said: ‘About 600 women per year may have a miscarriage that leads to an intervention by us. ‘I don’t know right now is what type of scan or number of scans that these patients had and we’re happy to look at that on a case by case basis.’
Cardiff and Vale Health Board has now offered an unreserved apology after admitting ‘unacceptable actions’, and says it has fixed the outdated procedure.
Director of nursing, Ruth Walker, said: ‘Ms. Wheatley was let down by our care and that’s not acceptable. We do not underestimate the distress that this has caused her and may cause other women who have experienced miscarriage.’
‘When I read the report I felt very devastated for Ms. Wheatley – we failed in our duty. The policies and procedures that the midwives followed at the time were not as up-to-date as they should have been. We had not updated these and that is not acceptable. We can assure patients that currently, our policies and procedures are updated and our staff are clear on what those are for women in the early stages of pregnancy.’
‘We are also reassessing the competency of allour staff who perform scans. The health board understands that there may be current or former patients who have concerns about their experience of early pregnancy scans while in our care. This is why we have opened a helpline to support those patients who feel they want to talk through issues relating to their care.”
You want to “talk through issues relating to their care”? I’d be talking to an attorney, STAT.
DCG
