In early March 2024 we wrote to NHS England and formally queried the rationale and justification for advising UK hospitals that there is no requirement to save cardiac images during the 20 week scan. NHSE dealt with this a complaint and replied in late June 2024;
"Following receipt of your complaint about the NHS Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme (FASP) 20-week screening scan fetal cardiac protocol, the NHS England FASP, including the Antenatal Pathway Implementation Lead, completed a full review of your case to ensure that it addresses your concerns and provides you with a full response to the issues you have raised."
“Following a national review at the time of implementing the fetal cardiac protocol, there was no evidence to suggest that archiving still images of the fetal heart improved detection rates. The review concluded that assessment of the fetal heart is a dynamic study, any saved images would not represent the complete assessment”.
“The storing of selective images would not necessarily represent the whole dynamic examination”.
“Any additional image archive is a local decision and is implemented and managed by that NHS maternity provider”.
“We will consider a review of the guidance, however at this point we are unable to specify what the timeframe for this review would be”.
We requested that "NHS England FASP make it a requirement across the country to capture and retain scan images, ideally video clips, as we believe still 2D images of a moving 3D structure often don’t adequately show what can be seen in a moving video clip"
This request was not addressed at all by FASP in their response.