GVs Mother
and New Born child in hospital
Midwife
with mother and child
Guide Voice: There’s something special
about the sight of a mother and her new-born baby. In this case,
both mother and baby are happy and healthy following a
straightforward pregnancy and birth. But some are not so lucky.
Fetal Hypoxia, a lack of oxygen going to the brain of the unborn
child, carries risks both for the baby and the mother. In the child
there is the risk of brain damage through oxygen starvation and
doctors will often proceed quickly to an emergency caesarean
section to protect the child – which can put the
mother’s health at risk!
00:30 SOT: Professor Nicholas Dale, University of
Warwick – “In England around 6% of babies
are born which have suffered either hypoxia in the womb or asphyxia
during birth. And that would suggest that our methods for detecting
that and responding to that are inadequate. That we dont detect
enough. If hypoxia is sufficiently serious that can result in
lasting brain damage. So babies may miss their developmental mile
stones, they may develop with lower IQ, there is even some thought
that some forms of autism may be related to fetal
hypoxia.”
01:12 GVs
University of Warwick exterior
‘BioMedical
Research Institute’ sign
Prof
Dale and colleague (Bruno Frenguelli) in the
laboratory
Guide Voice: Professor Dale and his team at the
University of Warwick in the West Midlands, at the heart of the UK,
working with the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS
Trust, are developing new means of testing for the threat of fetal
hypoxia that may significantly reduce the health risks to both
mother and baby.
They’ve come up with new biosensors for the measurement of
purines which could be key in detecting the risk of hypoxia in an
unborn child.
Hypoxanthine is a purine found in the blood and research has
shown that an unborn child with more than 15 micromoles of this
chemical per litre of their blood is at severe risk of fetal
hypoxia.
01:51 GVs
– Exterior of Hospital
People
in hospital corridors
Prof.
Dale and Manu Vatish in the hospital looking at the new probes and
discussing their use.
c.u.
bio-sensors
Guide Voice: Existing tests for fetal hypoxia
are slow, often leading doctors to perform emergency caesarean
section rather than risk brain damage to the child – but
Professor Dale and his researchers have devised their own fine
tuned probes that could be used in situ and deliver immediate test
results, allowing Doctors in the delivery room to make better
informed decisions on the treatment of their patients.
02:20 SOT: - Manu
Vatish, Obstetrics Senior Lecturer, University of
Warwick and the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS
Trust – “The use of Hypoxanthine as a
measurement of fetal hypoxia has two significant advantages.
Firstly it’s reproduceable, reliable and robust, which is far
superior to the current methods that we have for measuring fetal
hypoxia; and secondly, we can obtain the results in a much more
rapid time frame and I can’t stress enough how important it
is for the fetal outcome that we can get the results often as much
as eight minutes earlier.”
02:42 GVs
– Bruno Frenguelli conducting experiment on brain tissue
Guide Voice: For now, the research is focused
on the problems of predicting risk of fetal hypoxia – but the
longer term aims of the research also looks at life at the other
end of the human scale.
As we get older we are at increased risk of suffering from
strokes, a major cause of death for older people and one of the
main causes of severe disability. Professor Dale believes these new
biosensors will be able to identify potential high risk patients
and help to establish the best treatment for them.
03:11 - SOT: Prof. Dale – “The
other aspect that we would like to apply it to is almost at the
other end of the human life - which is when people get in the
situation when they may suffer from a stroke, which is generally
later on in life. We think probably the hypoxanthine sensors will
not be sufficient to give good diagnosis of stroke, but we think if
we measured all of the purines in a multi-sensor device, possibly
with one or two other analytes, we could have a bio-marker of
stroke, which will allow the clinician, even the paramedic treating
the person who suddenly collapsed, to diagnose the stroke and, with
any luck, to diagnose which particular type of stroke, based
on the abnormal levels of these substances in the
blood.”
03:56 GVs
Mother and child
c.u.
child
Guide Voice: But any such developments are for
the future. Right now the researchers are concentrating on ensuring
that all new born babies are as healthy as this one.
04:06 - SOT: Manu Vatish – “In
the long term I can see real genuine benefits to fetal outcome to
Mothers and their babies in every obstetric unit in the UK,
throughout Great Britain and eventually, and ultimately, the
world."
04:19
End
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