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UK sonographers and ultrasound practitioners working in obstetric ultrasound settings deliver unexpected findings to expectant parents as standard. However, there is a lack of clarity regarding the specific words, phrases and behaviours that represent best practice when communicating these findings. The current document contains consensus guidelines for news delivery which were initially generated during a one-day workshop attended by 28 stakeholders including interdisciplinary healthcare professionals, policy experts, representatives from third-sector organisations, lay experts and academic researchers. The draft guidelines were then circulated among the wider reading group which included the initial workshop attendees and an additional 11 contributors. Feedback was incorporated into the document until consensus was reached. The guidelines provide specific suggestions for words and phrases which sonographers and ultrasound practitioners can use in various news delivery scenarios which may arise in Early Pregnancy Unit (EPU) and Fetal Anomaly Screening Programme (FASP) settings.

Bioenergetic function is characterized with assays obtained by polarographic systems. Analog systems without data acquisition, visualization, and processing tools are used but require cumbersome operations to derive respiration rate and ADP to oxygen stoichiometry of oxidative phosphorylation (ADP/O ratio). The analog signal of a polarograhic system (YSI-5300) was digitized and a graphical user interface (GUI) was developed in MATLAB to integrate visualization, recording, calibration and processing of bioenergetic data. With the GUI, the signal is continuously visualized during the experiment and respiratory rates and ADP/O ratios can be determined. The integrated system was tested to evaluate bioenergetic function of subpopulations of mitochondria isolated from rat skeletal muscle (n = 10). Signal processing was applied to denoise data recorded at the sampling rate of 1000Hz, and maximize data decimation for computational applications. The error in calculating the bioenergetic outputs using decimated data is negligible when data are denoised. The estimate of respiration rate, ADP/O ratio and RCR obtained with denoised data at sampling rate as low as 5Hz was similar to that obtained with raw data recorded at sampling rate of 1000Hz. In summary, the integrated tools of the GUI overcome the limitations of data processing, accuracy, and utilization of analog polarographic systems.