Fetal echocardiography can successfully diagnose rare congenital anomalies like left atrial diverticulum, allowing for planned postnatal surgical correction.
May enable planned early correction in rare cases; hypothesis-generating and should not yet change practice.
Fetal echocardiography, performed on a 22-year-old woman at 31 weeks' gestation, revealed a diverticulum of the left atrium. The size of the diverticulum was similar to the size of the fetal heart in a four-chamber view. No evidence of congestive heart failure or changes in size of the diverticulum were observed on subsequent ultrasound examinations. The echocardiographic image suggested presence of a thrombus within the diverticulum. Echocardiography of the newborn confirmed the diagnosis, and surgical correction followed five days after the birth. Our approach to this problem is discussed here.
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Stańczyk et al. (1999) studied this question.
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