Jeremy Hunt has urged leading doctors to do more to help maternity specialists detect a rare complication of childbirth that can lead to a women bleeding to death within minutes.<\/p>\n
The former health secretary has thrown his weight behind a new campaign, aimed at improving the NHS\u2019s identification of placenta accreta spectrum<\/a>. The Action for Accreta campaign<\/a> was set up by Amisha Adhia and her husband, Nik, after five hospitals failed to spot that she had PAS.<\/p>\n Hunt has asked the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) to take account of alleged flaws in the NHS\u2019s handling of PAS raised by the Adhia family \u2013 and endorsed by dozens of other women \u2013 during its review of its guidelines on the condition.<\/p>\n Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians have joined the ex-Conservative chancellor in his demand for an overhaul of advice to doctors on managing PAS and NHS efforts to diagnose it.<\/p>\n In the letter, Hunt tells Dr Alison Wright, the RCOG\u2019s president, that Amisha Adhia \u201cexperienced a near-miss case of placenta accreta spectrum. Despite assessment across multiple London [NHS] trusts \u2013 including specialist PAS centres \u2013 she was repeatedly reassured that accreta was \u2018almost zero chance\u2019 because her placenta was not low-lying.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeremy Hunt served as health secretary in David Cameron\u2019s and Theresa May\u2019s governments. Photograph: Jacob King\/PA<\/p>\n The fact that an obstetrician did eventually spot her PAS ensured that she received the correct care and avoided \u201cwhat could otherwise have been catastrophic circumstances\u201d, he said. She gave birth to her daughter, Ishaani, without any major complications of PAS last September.<\/p>\n Hunt asks the RCOG \u201cto ensure that concerns raised by families \u2013 and supported by emerging data \u2013 are considered constructively and transparently within the guideline revision process\u201d. The RCOG is revising its guideline for the first time since issuing it in 2018.<\/p>\n He wrote in his capacity as chair of Westminster\u2019s all-party parliamentary group on patient safety. Hunt highlighted the campaign\u2019s aims of getting \u201cimproved national surveillance and visibility of PAS\u201d by the NHS, better recognition of the risks it poses and more training for staff.<\/p>\n Amisha Adhia said the RCOG should \u201creexamine its maternal health guidelines [which are] outdated and almost a decade old\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cSince the Guardian first reported on PAS last week I\u2019ve heard from frontline midwives, obstetricians and more families who recognise the dangerous gaps we experienced and confirmed they have seen these same failures,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is not my family\u2019s story alone. It is a pattern. More women are coming forward. That tells us that this is not isolated and it cannot be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n Wright said the RCOG will publish its updated guidance to doctors in the summer.<\/p>\n \u201cPlacenta accreta is a potentially serious complication of pregnancy, where the placenta is stuck to the muscle of your womb and\/or to nearby structures such as your bladder. It may cause heavy bleeding and trauma during childbirth.<\/p>\n \u201cEarly identification of placenta accreta through pregnancy scans and appropriate follow-up imaging is extremely important, so that care can be carefully planned, with the appropriate specialist teams, which improves outcomes for women and babies.\u201d<\/p>\n Philip Hunt, a former Labour health minister, said the fact that so many hospitals missed Amisha Adhia\u2019s PAS \u201cshould raise serious concerns for both the NHS and RCOG\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAs things stand we do not have a clear national picture of how many women are affected each year, how consistently cases are identified or whether maternity units are adequately prepared,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a condition can lead to catastrophic haemorrhage within minutes, that lack of visibility should concern us all.\u201d<\/p>\n Lord Hunt urged Wes Streeting, the health secretary, to order the NHS to start reporting cases of PAS and draw up a national strategy to improve detection and treatment.<\/p>\n Helen Morgan, the Liberal Democrats\u2019 health spokesperson, said: \u201cMissed cases of PAS show that our current system is failing to spot when women are at risk. Better training is needed so that conditions like PAS are spotted early and patients are given the care they need.<\/p>\n \u201cWomen, doctors and midwives feel trapped in a system where nothing changes and the same errors are repeated review after review. The government must work with the NHS to improve its diagnosis of PAS, especially given the risks and potentially life-changing consequences of a missed diagnosis.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeremy Hunt has urged leading doctors to do more to help maternity specialists detect a rare complication of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-442083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}