A new screening test for newborn babies is to be trialled in a bid to pick up more of those with heart defects, Public Health England has announced.
Pilot projects will begin in about six hospital trusts. The test, called pulse oximetry, measures the oxygen levels in the baby's blood, which can be an indicator of congenital problems, such as a hole in the heart. About 3,500 babies are born with congenital heart defects. Sometimes they are not picked up until the baby has been at home for months and becomes seriously ill.
The test is non-invasive and will be carried out at the same time as the general health check babies are given within the first 72 hours of life, probably by a midwife. It involves placing a clip called a probe on the baby's finger or toe, which shines a red light through the skin. It takes just a few minutes to measure the oxygen saturation of the blood.
The pilot programme has been recommended by the national screening committee, which advises government. No screening test is completely accurate and some babies with heart defects will still be missed. About 5% of babies will be found to have low oxygen saturation in the blood, but many will have other medical issues or no health problem at all – and the committee concluded that there would be far more of those than babies with congenital heart defects.
The committee decided that a pilot scheme was necessary to work out how to deal with false alarms as well as babies needing treatment, and also to assess what the financial impact on the NHS was likely to be.
Not all babies will be tested: some heart defects are identified in the womb through the routine ultrasound scan that pregnant women are asked to undergo at 18-20 weeks.
Dr Anne Mackie, director of programmes for the committee, which is supported by Public Health England, said the pilot was an exciting prospect. "Pulse oximetry has the potential to detect more babies with congenital heart defects to save lives and make sure babies get the care they need before they become seriously ill. However, the test will also identify many, many other babies with low oxygen. Some will need care for other problems and some will not be ill at all."
The committee recommended against introducing two other screening programmes. Screening for dental disease in children aged from six to nine years old was not effective, it said, and resources would be better spent on programmes to improve dental hygiene.
Screening for coeliac disease (a bowel condition resulting from the immune system's over-sensitivity to wheat, rye and barley) was also not useful, it decided, because the evidence showed no improvement in the health of those detected with the condition who had no symptoms – the main group who would be picked up by a screening test.
