An Overview of Contemporary Outcomes in Fetal Cardiac Intervention: A Case for High-Volume Superspecialization?

Pediatr Cardiol. 2020 Mar;41(3):479-485. doi: 10.1007/s00246-020-02294-2. Epub 2020 Mar 20.

Abstract

Fetal cardiac interventions (FCI) offer the opportunity to rescue a fetus at risk of intrauterine death, or more ambitiously to alter disease progression. Most of these fetuses require multiple additional postnatal procedures, and it is difficult to disentangle the effect of the fetal procedure from that of the postnatal management sequence. The true clinical impact of FCI may only be discernible in large-volume institutions that can commit to a standardized postnatal approach and have sufficient case volume to overcome their FCI learning curve.

Keywords: Atrial stent; Fetal cardiac intervention; HLHS.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Cardiology / standards*
  • Female
  • Fetal Heart / diagnostic imaging
  • Fetal Heart / surgery*
  • Fetoscopy / standards*
  • Humans
  • Pregnancy
  • Ultrasonography, Prenatal