Maternal Special Care Unit

In addition, DMC Hutzel Women’s Hospital offers a Maternal Special Care Unit, the only unit of its kind in the tri-county area for pregnant women who need advanced care and monitoring during labor and after delivery.

A high-risk pregnancy may result from the following:

• Pre-existing conditions such as asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, seizure, blood clotting disorders
• Over age of 35 or very young mothers
• Mother or baby develop complications during pregnancy
• Women carrying multiple babies
• Previous miscarriages or pre-term deliveries

OB Ultrasound and Specialized Testing

DMC Women and Infant Services is home to one of the state's most advanced obstetric ultrasound programs. That's why the program sees high-risk obstetrics patients from throughout southeast Michigan and across the state. We have advanced equipment and experience that are often not available at other locations, including access to state-of-the-art 3D and 4D ultrasound technology and many other advanced technologies that aren't yet commercially available.

As the home of the nation's only National Institutes of Health (NIH) Perinatology Research Branch, DMC Women Services at Hutzel Women's Hospital is a research and testing center for the latest obstetric ultrasound equipment. Physicians at the DMC have access to some of the most advanced technology and researchers who are using it in innovative ways.

Along with the most advanced technology, our obstetric ultrasound program has some of the most rigorous education and quality standards of any program. The ultrasound technicians (sonographers) and physicians in the program are required to participate in ongoing education and weekly training.

When performing an ultrasound, DMC Women and Infant Services sonographers and physicians are not just looking at the baby's brain or heart, they're looking at the whole baby. Sometimes they find something that has no significance on its own, but when paired with other conditions could become problematic. For this reason, it's important to do a high-level, high-quality scan of the whole baby and really understand how to interpret the findings.

Specialized Tests and Advanced Procedures

The DMC offers additional services for high-risk pregnancies, as needed.

• Fetal Echocardiography - Enables the physician to study a baby's heart in greater detail and is extremely useful in detecting heart defects before the baby is born. Once recognized, our high-risk pregnancy doctors in Michigan are often able to prepare for corrective surgery in some fetuses prior to birth or after the child is born.
• FIRST Trimester Screening - DMC Women's Services is one of only a few in Michigan able to perform this early screening for Down syndrome and trisomy 18. FIRST stands for First trimester Integrated Risk Screening for Trisomy, a test giving physicians and patients valuable information about the health of the fetus as early as 12 weeks gestation. The test is performed using a combination of ultrasound and blood tests. The screening correctly identifies over 85 percent of pregnancies with Down syndrome.
• Intrauterine Surgery and Fetal Transfusions - Hutzel Women's Hospital is one of the few hospitals in the country to perform intrauterine fetal surgery and fetal transfusions. Advanced ultrasound imaging techniques play an important role in performing and identifying patients appropriate for these therapies.
• High-Risk Amniocentesis - With their experience and accuracy in fetal imaging, the ultrasound program at Hutzel Women's Hospital is often involved in amniocentesis procedures with obstetrics patients who are at a higher risk for complications.
• Fetal MRI - can be used to provide information about the fetal brain, chest and abdomen that cannot be gathered from ultrasound alone. This information allows our Fetal Care Team to better understand if there are abnormalities, and how various abnormalities may correlate with your child's development during pregnancy and in the future.

Disclaimer: All patients who are being admitted or are symptomatic will receive a COVID-19 test. We currently allow two support persons per patient.