Help babies with serious heart conditions

Thank you again for all your interest and support of Tiny Tickers. 

It’s really exciting times for our work, especially our training of health professionals to be better able to detect heart problems during pregnancy scans.  We’ve just completed our biggested ever regional training programme - training more than 200 sonographers across Yorkshire and the Humber. We’ve announced a new scheme to offer practical training to every sonographer in Wales; and we’ve been helping FASP (the NHS’s Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme) with training in England. Our future ambitions are just as exciting - after we’ve trained in Wales we want to launch new schemes across the UK. 

This practical training makes a really difference for babies with heart conditions - early detection can save lives and improve outcomes. When we first started our work in 1999, only one in four babies with life-threatening CHD was spotted during pregnancy. Now it’s nearly half. That’s great progress, but we want to help drive the rates much higher.

Carys White, a Radiographer from Kent, gave birth to her first child, Harriett, on 23^rd October 2013 after a healthy pregnancy. A murmur was detected at Harriett’s 8 week check but she was already very weak and very ill. Harriett had open heart surgery which was complicated by her weak state, and the fact she was already in early heart failure. Thankfully Harriett made it through. Carys says,

"We have been through a hugely dramatic 2½ years since Harriett was born. Her condition wasn’t diagnosed during pregnancy and there is no question in my head that antenatal detection offers the best chance for the baby and family.

The pressure on Sonographers to identify heart and other anomalies, is so great. Tiny Tickers offers support and training to Sonographers, helping to increase their knowledge, understanding and confidence. But Tiny Tickers also offers knowledge to us, as parents, to take an active role in this scan through their Big Tick information. The 20-week scan is exciting – you can take some photos home and perhaps find out the gender of your baby – but ultimately, for the Sonographer in the room with you, it is an in-depth and complex clinical process. Anything that can be done to educate us all about the importance of the 20-week scan is vitally important."

Links:

• Tiny Tickers website