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The Twins Trust Centre for Research and Clinical Excellence opened at St George’s Hospital in London in 2020.
Your charity is expanding its work with Professor Asma Khalil and her team of multiple birth clinicians to carry out vital research, promote and deliver good care and encourage uptake of twin-specific growth charts.
We know St George’s delivers great care to families with twins, triplets or more and the team were one of the first in the country to follow National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) multiple birth guidance, which soon had a positive effect on births, reducing stillbirths in twins by 70%.
We used their best practice methods to establish our Maternity Engagement Project following the exemplary standards and practices carried out at St George’s which prove that following NICE multiple birth clinical guidance saves babies’ lives.
The Twins Trust Centre for Research and Clinical Excellence is a beacon for best care for multiple pregnancies and will offer support to maternity units throughout the UK to help them replicate this.
Expert clinicians will offer peer support, study days and webinars to NHS staff who are part of our Maternity Engagement quality improvement project.
The centre is home to the first ever registry of cases of TTTS (Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome) which has been accepted onto the NIHR (National Institute for Health Research) portfolio.
A specialist TTTS/multiple pregnancy research coordinator looks after the registry and liaises with midwives. She also trains midwives throughout the country to manage and upload their own cases.
The registry provides a deeper insight into the knowledge and understanding of TTTS, a potentially devastating condition which could lead to the loss of one or more babies.
The first ever twin-specific growth charts can be accessed freely via the centre and training given on how to use them. The charts were developed by Professor Khalil and funded by Twins Trust.
Clinical researchers at the centre will publish three papers each year – topics include ‘reducing pre-term birth and neonatal death in twins and triplets’ and ‘hypertensive disorders in twin pregnancies: risk factor and perinatal outcomes’.