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113 Maternity and Obstetrics NMH Annual Rep t | 2020 T he National Maternity Hospital provides a comprehensive early pregnancy assessment, ultrasound and fetal medicine service to over 8,000 women booked with the hospital. In addition the hospital is a busy tertiary referral unit accepting referrals from health professionals from all over the country. 2019 saw a further increase in the number of high risk patients referred to our unit. Every maternity hospital in the country referred patients. The following services are provided: early pregnancy assessment, first trimester screening, detailed anomaly screening, monitoring of multiple pregnancy, assessment of fetal wellbeing, amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling, management of rhesus disease, fetal therapy (including IUT, shunt placement and laser photocoagulation for twin to twin transfusion syndrome), antenatal care for high risk pregnancies. There are 9 dedicated Fetal Medicine sessions weekly. Fetal Medicine Unit The Fetal Medicine Unit workload remained extremely busy with a total of 33,420 (35,745 in 2019) official pregnancy ultrasound scans performed and recorded on the Viewpoint System in 2020 representing a 6% decrease (figure 1) compared with the 7.7% decrease in the number of births. 24,332 ultrasounds were performed in the Fetal Medicine Unit and 7,773 in Merrion Fetal Health (MFH). This unit provides similar ultrasound services to fee paying patients and as such works with the exact same clinical guidelines and governance. MFH performed 23% of the total scans. The figures presented in this report are a combination of both units. In addition to the above, there were 1,271 gynaecology scans performed in the Fetal Medicine Unit which do not include gynaecology scans performed by Consultant Radiologists which are recorded on the Radiology system. In addition to performing scans, other duties Dr Siobhan Corcoran, Consultant Obstetrician and Fetal Medicine subspecialist donning Personal Protective Equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

