How important is a cardiac echogenic focus in a routine fetal examination?
Intracardiac echogenic foci are very frequent findings during routine fetal ultrasound examination and sometimes a reason for referral of patients for fetal echocardiography. OBJECTIVE: To assess the incidence of echogenic intracardiac foci in a mixed population of fetuses at high and low risk for congenital heart defects, and to determine whether the association between echogenic foci and congenital heart disease is stronger than in the general fetal population. DESIGN: Retrospective evaluation of clinical files at two fetal cardiology referral centers, during the last two years. All cases that had at least one echogenic focus were selected for our study. Maternal age, gestational age, reason for referral, location and number of echogenic foci, chromosomal abnormalities and cardiac defects were analyzed. As previous studies suggest increased risk of trisomy associated with echogenic foci and considering that congenital heart defects are more frequent in fetuses with trisomy 21, we exc
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