Clinical application of the Fetal HQ technique in the evaluation of
normal foetal cardiac function at different gestational weeks
Abstract
Objectives: To investigate the clinical value of fetal heart
quantification (fetal HQ) in the evaluation of normal foetal heart size,
morphology and cardiac function at different gestational weeks.
Materials and methods: A total of 101 pregnant women diagnosed
with a healthy foetus by foetal echocardiography from September 2021 to
December 2023 were selected and classified into four different periods
of gestational weeks: 20-28 weeks (25 cases), 29-32 weeks (26 cases),
33-36 weeks (26 cases), 37-40 weeks (24 cases). Quantitative analyses
were performed by automatically tracking the endocardium using fetal HQ
software that comes with the Voluson E10 from GE. To investigate the
correlation between four-chambered vesicle length end-diastolic (4CV
LED), four-chambered vesicle transverse width end-diastolic (4CV TWED),
global sphericity index (GSI), ejection fraction (EF), stroke volume
(SV), cardiac output (CO) and gestation age (GA), and the variability of
normal foetal cardiac morphology and cardiac function at different
gestational weeks. Results: A statistically significant
difference was observed between 4CV LED and 4CV TWED in normal foetuses
at different gestational weeks ( P < 0.05), which
exhibited a positive correlation with gestational week. Conversely, no
significant correlation was identified between GSI and gestational week
( P > 0.05). The mean GSI of 101 normal foetuses
found to be 1.25 ± 0.09. A comparative analysis of EF, SV, and CO in
normal foetuses at different gestational weeks revealed statistically
significant differences in SV and CO ( P < 0.05), which
gradually increased with gestational weeks, whereas there was no
statistically significant difference in EF ( P > 0.05).
Conclusions: Fetal HQ represents a straightforward and
dependable method for evaluating GSI and 24-segment SI of the left and
right ventricles, which can provide a certain theoretical basis for the
clinical quantitative evaluation of fetal cardiac geometry and cardiac
function.