Parents missing out over cause of stillbirths

THOUSANDS of bereaved parents across the UK are not finding out why their baby died because of overstretched pathology services, campaigners have warned.

Every day in the UK, 17 babies are stillborn or die shortly after birth. However, the perinatal post-mortem examination rate in the UK remains low at about 39 per cent, with little effort being made to improve up-take since the organ retention scandals in the late 1990s, according to campaigners.

Stillbirth charity Sands and the Royal College of Pathologists are calling for resources to allow more post-mortem examinations to take place, which can help parents going through future pregnancies.

The charity said there were several reasons why rates of post-mortem examinations remained so low. In many cases bereaved parents were put off consenting to a post-mortem examination because the process for seeking consent was bewildering, with some maternity units using consent forms that are up to 25 pages long.

In some cases parents were not even offered the chance of a post-mortem examination. Sands said that despite the dedication of perinatal pathology staff, the service was underfunded and understaffed with too few pathologists and mortuary staff, and variation around the country in the quality of service on offer.

The charity said parents were missing out on information that could help to explain their baby's death and inform their care in a future pregnancy.

Sands chief executive Neal Long said: "There is significant variation in the quality of care after a baby has died throughout the UK, particularly the availability of perinatal pathology services and the lack of standardisation in the post-mortem (examination] consent form."