We are aware of the NHS England FASP 20 week scan guidance document. “There is no requirement to archive images of the fetal cardiac protocol views”. However, we are aware there is disparity amongst NHS hospital trusts nationally when congenital heart defects are not identified at this scan. We understand some hospital trusts don’t retain fetal cardiac images, some do, and some retain video clips, and some retain both. There doesn’t seem to be any consistency.
We have been advised by NHS England and all the ICB’s that they do not hold the following information as it is “granular”. We have been advised to approach each of the acute trusts.
Our questions are;
1.When congenital heart defects ARE NOT identified during screening at the 20 week fetal anomaly scan;
a)Does your trust currently retain the fetal cardiac views?
b)Were fetal cardiac views retained in 2021 and 2022?
c)If views are currently retained, are these still images or video clips?
d)For how long has your trust had this fetal cardiac view retention policy?
Please feel free to access our online petition on Change.Org. This will provide context to our request. If you’re not comfortable accessing a link from a work device, please utilise your own personal device and search “standardise fetal heart scan protocols” on the Change.Org platform. The information could be of benefit to friends or family.
Utilising the regional data in the NICOR 2023 National Congenital Heart Disease Audit, we’re seeking to establish if there is any correlation between those ICS’s / trusts that do not keep any records, and those ICS’s / trusts which have considerably lower regional antenatal detection rates. Nobody we have approached seems to hold this information and therefore it seems there is no national co-ordination, review or assessment of this data.
It has taken us 12 months to get this far through subject access requests and freedom of information requests. We’re still trying to establish what happened to us as a family and why. There certainly seems to be a lack of transparency or information provided to affected families such as ourselves.
