New-born babies could undergo routine screening for life-threatening congenital heart disease, doctors claimed today.
Pulse oximetry screening has a low "false positive" rate, and early diagnosis makes it a cost-effective intervention, say researchers on the website of the British Medical Journal.
Professor Ingegerd Ostman-Smith of Gothenburg University, Sweden, and colleagues evaluated the use of pulse oximetry by screening 39,821 babies born between July 2004 and March 2007.
Of the babies, 29 showed signs of congenital heart disease. Combining physical examination with pulse oximetry screening detected 24 (83 per cent) of cases. "False positive rate with pulse oximetry was substantially lower than that with physical examination alone," write the authors.
They conclude that: "Introducing pulse oximetry screening before discharge improved total detection rate of duct dependent circulation to 92 per cent. The probable prevention of neurological morbidity and reduced need for preoperative neonatal intensive care suggest that such screening will be cost-effective long term."
Professor Keith Barrington of the University of Montreal in Canada, writes in an editorial that a 2005 review for the UK Health Technology Assessment programme called for further evaluation of pulse oximetry screening.
But "new high quality studies show that detection of critical heart disease in asymptomatic infants can significantly reduce the number of infants being discharged without a diagnosis", Professor Barrington writes.
Following this study in particular, "universal pulse oximetry screening of all newborn infants seems to be a low risk, low cost strategy for improving the detection of critical congenital heart disease".
"Serious consideration should be given to its introduction wherever neonatal cardiac surgery is available", he concludes.
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