Consultant obstetrician Dr Daniel McKenna said ultrasound tests should be used in the latter stages of both low- and high-risk pregnancies in maternity hospitals as a matter of routine to prevent problems.

And, he said, while a low-risk pregnancy was considered as a retrospective diagnosis, only pregnancies considered to be high-risk in Britain were examined during the last trimester.

Dr McKenna, one of the speakers at a public meeting in Dublin organised by the Royal College of Physicians in Ireland, said there was evidence that the stillbirth rate in Ireland was 40% lower than the rate in Britain and attributed this to the increased use of ultrasound in Irish maternity hospitals.

The meeting, chaired by RTÉ journalist and broadcaster Miriam O’Callaghan, was also told that the quality of ultrasound had improved dramatically in recent years.

Dr McKenna pointed out that Doppler ultrasound technology was able to examine blood flow in specific vessels so as to assess foetal wellbeing.

The chair of the college’s institute of obstetrics and gynaecology, Dr Michael O’Hare, said evidence that increased used of ultrasound scans was reducing the stillbirth rate had to be taken very seriously.

Consultant obstetrician Prof Deirdre Murphy, who also addressed the meeting, expressed concern at Ireland’s rate of caesarean sections,

which she believed was now too high.

Prof Murphy is a consultant obstetrician at the Coombe Woman’s Hospital where a fifth of all births were by caesarean section in 2006. Two in five were elective, while the remainder were emergency cases.

The national caesarean rate is now close to one in four, and as a mode of delivery carried a significantly increased risk to the mother’s health.

Prof Murphy has a special interest in high-risk obstetrics and has extensive experience in producing clinical guidelines in obstetrics and gynaecology.

The master of the Rotunda Hospital, Dr Michael Geary, who also spoke at the meeting said the journey through the birth canal was the most hazardous journey of a person’s entire life.

He believed the speciality of obstetrics needed to be elevated within the healthcare system to the status of heart disease and cancer in terms of importance and funding.

Article by Irish Examiner’s Evelyn Ring.