Value of conventional fetal echocardiography combined with spatiotemporal image correlation in the prenatal diagnosis of total anomalous pulmonary venous connection / 中华超声影像学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To explore whether the use of spatiotemporal image correlation (STIC) can supply additional information with respect to conventional fetal echocardiography in the prenatal diagnosis of total anomalous pulmonary venous connection(TAPVC).Methods Twenty-five cases diagnosed as TAPVC received fetal echocardiography examination.Four-dimensional volumes from 19 cases of suspected TAPVC were compared to conventional echocardiography.Echocardiographic characteristics were compared with the results of postnatal work-up and pathology.Results TAPVC was found in 25 cases by fetal echocardiography,four cases were isolated TAPVC,21 TAPVC had associated cardiac anomalies.Among them,nine cases were supracardiac types,six cases were infracardiac types,nine cases were intracardiac types and one was indefinite.Three true positivecases of TAPVC were confirmed after birth.Twenty-two choose to terminate pregnancy,9 of which refused to autopsy,and 10 true positive cases of TAPVC were confirmed at autopsy while 3 were considered false-positive cases.4D ultrasound with STIC clearly visualized the anomalous PV confluence and/or the draining vertical vein in all nineteen cases examined.Conclusions STIC may be proposed to identify abnormal venous drainage at the screening level,thus supplying additional information over that provided by 2D fetal echocardiography.