Sir, – The suggestion by Dr Chris Fitzpatrick that a tri-located national high-risk maternity unit be located on the same campus as St James’s Hospital and the new National Children’s Hospital (NCH) is an excellent one (Letters, August 29th).
It would end the current unsatisfactory situation where critically ill newborn infants requiring surgery have to be transported for this care, not just across Dublin but often from distant parts of the country.
Modern imaging techniques permit a substantial majority of conditions requiring urgent surgery in the newborn period to be diagnosed antenatally.
Clinicians would be able to plan the managed transfer of mothers to the high-risk unit ahead of delivery and the seamless and immediate transfer of critically ill infants.
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Mothers would be able to remain close to their babies before, during and after surgery.
A high-risk maternity unit would also serve women with very complicated pregnancies in need of the specialised adult care available at St James’s.
The unit would not need to be large, possibly of the order of 30 or 40 beds. Sufficient specialist maternal-foetal staffing could be drawn on a rotating basis from the existing clinicians of the three Dublin maternity hospitals.
Women with less complicated pregnancies would obviously continue to deliver in their local units.
The establishment of such a unit could be rapidly progressed in tandem with the completion of the new NCH. It would provide Ireland in a relatively short time with a tri-located general, maternity, and paediatric hospital campus in line with international best practice.
The cost would be a fraction of the NCH and the benefit to women and their babies would be immense. – Yours, etc,
Dr PETER BOYLAN,
Ranelagh,
Dublin 6.