IT WOULD be “impossible” to reassure women their pregnancies had ended as a result of miscarriage in the past if they had had only an ultrasound examination followed by a surgical procedure to evacuate the womb, the chair of the review team said yesterday.
Prof William Leger said many thousands of women would be “very anxious” as a result of this report.
Asked how a woman, who had had bleeding in the first seven weeks of pregnancy and had presented at a maternity department and had been told no heartbeat could be detected and had had a subsequent ERPC (evacuation of retained products of conception) or a DC (dilation and curettage), could be reassured, he said: “It is impossible to fully reassure them.
“Where a woman in this situation is anxious about whether her miscarriage was correctly diagnosed, there is no way of looking back. If they were diagnosed on the basis of just an ultrasound, it is something I am afraid they are going to have to come to terms with. If there was an internal examination as well, they can be more reassured that the diagnosis was correct.”
He said there were about 70,000 miscarriages in Ireland in the past five years and about 30 per cent of these would have started or occurred in the first seven weeks of pregnancy.
He urged women who were worried to contact their maternity hospital.
Minister for Health James Reilly said he empathised with all the women who were affected by the report, directly or indirectly, but he said the likelihood of this happening again had been hugely diminished as a result of the review’s recommendations.
He also said he believed it was unfair on a couple, when in a distressed state after being told they may have lost their baby, to “have the presence of mind to ask” for a second scan. “I think it should be offered and they should be allowed plenty of time – as in a number of days – to make that decision.”
He said the HSE had apologised for what happened and for the lack of expertise among staff.
He said all ultrasound machines had been checked and were safe to use, but any machines over five years old would be replaced over the next couple of weeks.