Untrained staff ‘fail to detect 90% of foetal defects’

DEFECTS in unborn babies are not always detected because there are not enough expertly-trained personnel to perform ultrasounds, an expert in foetal abnormalities has warned.

Prof Fergal Malone, the newly-appointed professor and chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at the Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) and the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin, said up to 90% of congenital abnormalities can go undetected if an unskilled person carries out screening.

"There is good evidence now that if you're not trained and you're not following a proper set of guidelines, you're only going to pick up 10-15% of congenital abnormalities and that's a tragedy," he said. "If you have someone who's skilled using proper equipment doing an ultrasound scan you can pick up between 75-80% of all abnormalities, and I'm not just talking Down Syndrome here, I'm talking about holes in the heart, spina bifida, cleft lip, a huge range of abnormalities."