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Newborn heart screening study publishes in The Lancet

A quick and painless test that measures blood oxygen levels is able to detect more cases of life threatening congenital heart defects than current standard approaches reports research published in The Lancet.

In the largest UK pulse oximetry study to date, funded by the NIHR HTA programme, a team led by Dr Andrew Ewer of the University of Birmingham screened more than 20 000 apparently healthy newborn babies across six maternity units in the UK.  Life threatening and significant heart defects apparent at birth account for three per cent of infant deaths and up to one half of affected babies are not identified by the current screening techniques.

The study further strengthens the evidence base and indicates the potential benefit of pulse oximetry screening as part of the routine assessment of all newborns prior to discharge.  When screening was combined with existing ultrasound and physical examination, the detection of critical congenital heart defects was 92 per cent and no babies died from undiagnosed heart conditions.

Pulse oximetry was found to have a false positive rate of 0.8 per cent, equating to 169 babies. However it was found that a significant number of these cases had further medical problems that required immediate attention.

Commenting on the study’s findings, Dr Ewer said: “Pulse oximetry is a safe, non-invasive, feasible, and reasonably accurate test, which has sensitivity that is better than that of antenatal screening and clinical examination. It adds value to existing screening and is likely to be useful for identification of cases of critical congenital heart defects that would otherwise go undetected. The detection of other diseases is an additional advantage.”