DOCTOR OFFERS TO LOOK FOR FETAL HEART DEFECTS

A Utah physician is offering a free service designed to see if ultrasound tests can detect dangerous heart abnormalities in babies before they are born.

Dr. Greggory R. DeVore of the Fetal Diagnostic Center, 508 E. South Temple, made the offer in a letter he mailed to all obstetricians that he could locate in the state. "We called the Utah Medical Association" and got the addresses for 180 of the doctors, he said."As you are probably aware, the most common and serious birth defects which impact upon neonatal (newborn) care are those involving the cardiovascular system," the letter begins.

It then invites doctors to participate in a study that he is conducting, "which could have a major impact upon your patients and the well-being of their unborn children. . . . This study was approved by (the) Research and Human Rights Committee of LDS Hospital on July 12, 1995."

Under the study, DeVore and his associates would train doctors on the techniques of acquiring ultrasound images of the fetal heart. Then he would screen videotapes of ultrasound images for congenital heart defects.

The tapes themselves would be made by the obstetricians or their technicians.

The study would be to see if a review by DeVore "of a one-minute examination of the fetal heart . . . could identify fetuses with complex heart defects," he said.

In addition, the offer says that when a suspected abnormal finding shows up on a videotape, a participating doctor should be willing to refer the patient for free follow-up ultrasound exam of the fetus' chest.

He hopes to examine 3,000 tapes as part of the study. "I'm donating my time" for this, he said in an interview.

DeVore explained that doctors who make ultrasound exams sometimes may not know how to interpret the heart views. He would like doctors to send him tapes containing series of exams of the hearts of unborn children.

"I can look at that tape and say, `Normal. Normal. Normal. Abnormal,' " he said.

Major heart defects occur in about three percent of babies, he said. These are "not the little holes in the heart," but serious abnormalities.

In Utah, 30,000 children are born every year, he said. At that rate, serious heart defects could occur in 90 Utah infants every year.

Unfortunately, when a baby is born with a heart defect, the child will look healthy because until then, the mother's circulation supplied oxygen and other needs.

"The circulation that was unique to the fetus is still there" at birth, he said. "But then in 12 hours or 24 hours or 36 hours, the baby turns blue and crashes. . . . By this time the kid's very sick."

Physicians will determine what is wrong and try to fix the heart defect to save the infant's life. But by then the baby's chances could be seriously compromised, he said.

With early detection of the defect, as soon as the baby is delivered doctors can correct the problem, giving the child much better chances.