DETAILS OF a further case in which a woman was wrongly told she had miscarried her baby when in fact she was still pregnant emerged yesterday.
The Irish Times
has learned that a mother from the Athenry area of Co Galway was told she had miscarried when she presented for a scan to a doctor who works at Galway’s University College Hospital.
She was asked if she wanted to immediately undergo a procedure to have the foetus removed. She opted to defer the D&C procedure to arrange childcare for her other children and when she returned to the hospital she asked for a further scan.
While a member of staff was reluctant to offer it, she insisted on having the scan carried out, and it confirmed the woman’s suspicions that her baby was still alive.
Krysia Lynch, of the Association for Improvements in the Maternity Services (AIMS), said the organisation had yesterday received numerous calls from concerned women who had miscarriages. “To what extent is this replicated across the country?
“Is this just the tip of the iceberg?” she asked.
“We certainly would have heard of many other cases in which scan results are used as an unfailing piece of diagnosis and that the woman’s care then follows on from that … assuming that the scan is infallible.”
News of this latest case comes a day after the family of a 13-week-old boy from north Dublin called for an independent inquiry into the HSE’s handling of a misdiagnosed miscarriage in their case.
The family in the Drogheda case have called for an independent investigation into the handling of their case by the Health Service Executive (HSE).
Michael and Melissa Redmond, from Donabate in north Co Dublin, said they were “disgusted” by the HSE failure to replace scanning equipment at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital for six months after the misdiagnosis last year.
Dr Alan Finan, clinical director of women’s and children’s services with the HSE northeast region, said what happened was “a very, very rare event” but said not every maternity unit does a second scan to confirm every diagnosis of first trimester miscarriage.
Dr Finan admitted “it took longer than it should have” to replace the scanner. “Obviously resource issues play a part in how we have medical equipment replaced,” he said.
The HSE said as far as it was aware this was the only machine of its type in the northeast region. It is not clear if similar machines were used in other regions.
It said last night there were no plans to review the scans carried out on other women with the machine before it was replaced.
It stressed that, since July 2009 when the misdiagnosis occurred, measures were put in place to ensure that where a foetal heart was not detected on this machine, a further scan was carried out on another machine.
The junior doctor who misdiagnosed her had done similar scans at a number of Dublin maternity hospitals.
Asked if any action was taken against the doctor, the HSE said its review of the “near tragedy” was not about apportioning blame but ascertaining the facts to minimise the risk of other similar events occurring errors.
“Further training and supervision has been provided” to the doctor, it said.
In a statement the HSE said that there is a level of uncertainty in ultrasound scanning, especially in the early stages of a pregnancy.
“It is rare but situations can occur when a scan will suggest that the pregnancy is lost but subsequent scans may show a foetal heartbeat. Therefore repeat scanning is undertaken when appropriate,” the statement