County Derry woman's campaign to have heart scan made available to all adults

A County Derry woman is calling on the Department of Health to consider making a scan available to all adults in a bid to detect underlying heart conditions.

Michelle Farren is seeking to raise more awareness around the early detection of heart defects.

Her campaign to have echocardiogram tests made accessible to all adults has seen her write to local MLAs and the Health Minister Robin Swann.

An echocardiogram is a type of ultrasound scan used to look at the heart and nearby blood vessels.

Ms Farren, who suffers from a heart condition which was detected through an echocardiogram when she was 21, says the scan saved her life.

After collapsing at home, Michelle was found to have atrial septal defect (ASD), a condition she was born with but was unaware of until she was offered the echocardiogram scan.

Speaking to the County Derry Post, the Dungiven woman said she hopes that by advocating for the scans to be made available, it will help save lives.

“I am calling for echocardiogram heart scans to be offered to all as they can detect and confirm a killer heart defect,” she said.

“This is a safe and painless procedure that is totally risk-free. The same scan found my defect. Defects can be corrected from birth. Pregnant women can also have fetal echocardiograms which will tell if their unborn child has a heart defect and this can be corrected after birth.

"This is proven and can happen and this is why I am calling on the Department to take action to implement these scans and help to save lives.”

The 36 year-old continued: “I had the scan after I collapsed at home and they found that I had a hole in the heart which had been there from birth. I was then able to have corrective surgery. I am proof sitting here today that not all heart defects are corrected at birth.

Michelle has written to Health Minister Robin Swann.

“The unfortunate thing about it is that there are some people out there who have died and afterwards their families have been told that they had a heart defect that was not detected.

“I am a lucky statistic but the unlucky statistics are the people who unfortunately did not get the heart scan and died from a heart condition that went undetected. I hope changes can be made to avoid unneccessary deaths in the future.”

A Department of Health spokesperson last night said: “The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) is the independent, expert body that advises the four UK Health Ministers on all aspects of screening and they have considered, on a number of occasions, whether any form of screening should be introduced for conditions associated with Sudden Cardiac Death in young people without symptoms.

“The UK NSC last reviewed the evidence in 2019 and concluded that screening for conditions associated with Sudden Cardiac Death in the young should not be offered at present.

"The full report is available via the UK NSC’s website Sudden Cardiac Death - UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) - GOV.UK (view-health-screening- recommendations.service .gov.uk).

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“The Department continues to be guided by the UK NSC’s recommendations on proposals for screening programmes and we understand that a further review of this recommendation will take place in the future. 

“The Department’s Community Resuscitation Strategy aims to increase the survival rate for those who suffer an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest by improving awareness of and access to, automated external defibrillators across Northern Ireland.

"The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) leads on the implementation of the Strategy - to date this work has involved the deployment of Community Resuscitation Development Officers (CRDOs); to increase the number of people trained in CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation); progress on CPR training in schools and improving information about defibrillators and how they can be deployed in the community.”