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The South Australian Neonatal Screening Centre is located within the Department of Chemical Pathology at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital 72 King William St, Adelaide, a leading Paediatric teaching hospital
The role of the South Australian Neonatal Screening Centre is to identify and diagnose infants who are at risk of developing one of the screened disorders. This enables early medical intervention to prevent, or significantly reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with the screened disorder.
The South Australian Neonatal Sceening Centre was established in 1966 with screening for Phenylketonuria, (PKU). The PKU test was developed by Dr. Robert Guthrie in the early 1960's. Since these early beginnings the numbers of patients screened by the Centre and the disorders tested for has grown, so that infants are now screened for over 30 different inherited disorders. To date, over 750,000 infants have been screened in South Australia with the detection of over 250 affected infants.
Developments in technology saw the Centre obtain its first Tandem Mass Spectrometer in 1998. This piece of equipment allowed for expansion in the range of health problems that infants could be tested for to include over 30 different inherited disorders. In the year 2001, there are only 15 centres worldwide that use tandem mass spectrometry as part of their neonatal screening program.
The addition of another two new machines in 2001 will allow the South Australian Neonatal Screening Centre to become one of the leading neonatal screening centres in the Asian Pacific Region.
The South Australian Neonatal Screening Centre is at the forefront of research into newborn screening in the world and provides state of the art screening services for a number of states in Australia as well as several centres overseas.
Personnel
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Rosemarie Gerace
Senior Officer
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Bronwen Bartlett
Technical Staff
Kerry Barnard
Technical Staff
Telephone +61 8 8161 7396
Fax +61 8 8161 7100
Email: neonatalscreen@wch.sa.gov.au
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