The effectiveness of extended fetal heart screening in a Tertiary Center

Abstract

Our study is to evaluate the effectiveness of extended fetal heart screening in a tertiary center and research the sensitivity, specifity and the positive and negative values of echocardiography.316 patients who were diagnosed with congenital anomalies among those scanned with the extended fetal heart screening protocol in the perinatology department of our hospital were included in our study. Patients who were not diagnosed with congenital anomalies were excluded. Fetal echocardiographies were perfomed on patients who were admitted to our perinatology clinic, in accordance with the ISUOG extended fetal heart screening protocol. In our study, 55.3% of all cases with cardiac anomalies are concomitant with extracardiac anomalies. An interventional procedure was performed on 52.5% of the patients for karyotyping purposes. 19.3% was terminated early in the pregnancy, 5% and 12.5% were lost during the intrauterine and neonatal periods, respectively. In our study, upon comparison of the fetal and neonatal results, we determined that the false positive and negative rates for fetal echocardiography were 3.5% and 9.4% respectively.In our study, the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and accuracy of echocardiography were determined as 91%, 99%, 98% and 99% respectively during the application of ISUOG recommendations in a tertiary center.