Thursday 19 November 2015

A new report, the MBRRACE-UK National Confidential Enquiry into antepartum term stillbirths, suggests improvements in quality of care could save hundreds of babies’ lives every year.

Researchers conducting a confidential enquiry into antepartum term stillbirths, that is, babies who die before labour but around the time they are due to be delivered, found that half of all term stillbirths were associated with major gaps in quality of care.  The enquiry consists of multi-disciplinary panels of experts examining the medical records of 85 stillbirth cases (which were representative of the more than 1000 stillbirths which occurred in 2013) and assessing their care against existing antenatal guidelines.

The enquiry has revealed vital opportunities were missed that could potentially have saved babies’ lives. These included:

•    Two out of three women with a risk factor for developing diabetes in pregnancy were not offered testing – a missed opportunity to monitor those pregnancies more closely and potentially save the baby.

•    National guidance for screening and monitoring the growth of the baby through pregnancy was not followed for two out of three stillbirths the panels reviewed.

•    Almost half of the women had contacted their maternity units concerned that their baby’s movements had slowed, changed or stopped. In half of these pregnancies, there were missed opportunities to potentially save the baby including not following up on the woman’s concerns, misinterpreting the baby’s heart trace or failing to respond appropriately to other factors.

•    From the case notes researchers investigated, it was clear that only one in four stillbirths were reviewed internally to understand whether the baby’s stillbirth might have