Should patient-centred abortion care involve the offer of an ultrasound to all, including those who do not clinically require it?

In our service in NHS Grampian, like many others across the UK, we removed routine ultrasound scanning as part of pre-abortion assessment in 2020 to support full telemedicine provision of abortion care. Telemedicine can improve accessibility of abortion services, and certainly this has been our experience locally. We were also delighted to read Blaylock et al’s article1 highlighting that many people really value not having a routine ultrasound scan as part of true patient-centred care, and that indeed provision of routine ultrasound can be emotionally distressing.

In our service, when people are advised that they do not medically require an ultrasound, they are still given the choice to opt for an ultrasound as part of their pre-abortion care should they wish to do so. We decided to undertake a retrospective case notes review to determine the proportion of patients who opted for a clinic appointment for an ultrasound scan…

Read the full article ›