To give the tiniest patients the best possible start, Watford General Hospital’s Neonatal Unit is using innovative technology to provide faster and gentler diagnoses for premature babies with suspected lung conditions.
Baby Maeve, born early at only 30 weeks in October 2025, is just one infant who has benefited from lung ultrasound technology at Watford General. Babies born this early and this poorly usually need many chest x-rays in quick succession to guide their care, but x-rays often come with risk and anxiety.
X-rays produce radiation, which in small doses is not significant, but multiple x-rays often come with radiation risk.
For Maeve, being born so early, every breath mattered. She was tiny, and from her very first minutes she was fighting to breathe. Her parents say that “her lungs were not ready for the world”, and the team moved quickly to give her the oxygen and support she needed.
At a point when Maeve was at her most vulnerable, she needed many x-rays so that doctors could see what was happening inside her lungs. The thought of the exposure to radiation, however small, felt difficult for Maeve’s parents: “Each x-ray is small on its own, but they add up, and the thought of our daughter having that much radiation in her first days of life was hard to sit with.”
For Maeve's parents, Kelly and Tom Bowers using lung ultrasound technology was game changer: There were so many benefits for Maeve: “No radiation, answers in minutes, and around 70% fewer x-rays for our daughter. In a place where you feel you have no control, that was everything.”
Lung ultrasounds offer a safer alternative to x-rays, and are a reliable, quick and safe way to assess lung disease in premature babies. It is performed like other standard ultrasounds, but has the added benefit of being portable, and so clinicians can bring the machine to the baby at their cot side. Since the introduction of lung ultrasounds, the number of x-rays used on preterm babies has reduced from 80% to 40%.
Maeve’s parents said: “For us, that was everything. Fewer times she had to be disturbed, fewer machines wheeled to her cot, and far less radiation for her growing body. It also meant answers came faster, so her care could be adjusted in the moment rather than after a wait. In a place where you feel you have no control over anything, knowing she was getting the gentlest possible care made all the difference.”
Lung ultrasounds are relatively new in the field of Neonatology in diagnosing lung conditions, and Watford General is leading the way by transferring from using x-rays as a diagnosis tool to ultrasounds. So far, only a small number of Neonatal Units from across the county are using this method of diagnoses.
The instrument uses ultrasound energy to send pulses through the baby’s chest to collect the returning signals from the lungs. The ultrasound produces an image of the baby’s lungs on a screen straight away.
Dr Sankara Narayanan, Consultant Neonatologist, also describes the benefit of lung ultrasounds: “The introduction of lung ultrasound has revolutionised respiratory care for newborn babies like Maeve. We can now reach an accurate diagnosis in minutes, at the cot side, without moving a fragile baby and without any radiation.
“What once meant repeated x-rays over many hours can now be answered by a single bedside scan. For babies in the first, most vulnerable days of life, that is a win on every front: rapid, more accurate and radiation-free.
“Our ambition now is to train more doctors and nurse practitioners so that lung ultrasound becomes part of everyday newborn care, and every baby who needs it can share in the benefit it brings.”
Maeve’s parents are grateful for the way she was treated in the Neonatal Unit at Watford General during her first few weeks of life.
“Maeve is doing well now. When we look back, we feel lucky that her unit had this technology and people trained to use it. The team at Watford is one of the few units leading the way. With more investment, more doctors and nurse practitioners can be trained, and more babies like Maeve can have a safer, gentler start.”
The Neonatal team at West Herts are working with West Herts Hospitals Charity to fund an ultrasound simulator. The simulator will fast-track and scale up training for nurse practitioners and resident doctors so that more babies can benefit from this diagnosis method.
If you’d like to help babies like Maeve receive the best start in life, please visit: https://whhc.org.uk/donate