Comparison of fetal and postnatal echocardiography results

Abstract

The analysis of echocardiography results in 394 fetuses and 570 neonates showed the high accuracy of prenatal diagnosis of congenital heart disease (CHD) in a specialized cardiac surgery facihty. The accuracy of critical CHD identification at the unspeciahzed stage of fetal diagnosis was 50%. Heart defects, such as aortic coarctation, interrupted aortic arch, and total anomalous pulmonary venous drainage, turned out to be most difficult for prenatal diagnosis (at all stages). There were no problems in the prenatal diagnosis of the following defects: tetralogy of Fallot, all types of single ventricle defect, and atrioventricular septal defect. The discordances between the diagnosis of CHD by fetal echocardiography at an obstetric stage and that in a specialized cardiology facihty were mostly due to the inaccurate description of all components of complex heart defects