Intracardiac echogenic focus and its location: association with congenital heart defects

Abstract

Purpose: Significance of intracardiac echogenic focus (ICEF) in the fetal heart remains controversial. We aimed to investigate whether the location of ICEF is associated with fetal cardiac structure defects (CSDs) in low-risk pregnant women.

Materials and Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted. Singleton pregnancies with normal values of triple fetal serum markers were included. 758 of 9782 fetuses with ICEF were reviewed for involvement of three ICEF locations (left, right, and bilateral ventricles (BVs)) in CSDs. χ² or Fisher’s exact test was performed for statistical analysis.

Results: ICEF prevalence was 7.7% and its location was most frequently in the left ventricle (LV) (84.8%), followed by the BV (11.6%) and the right ventricle (RV) (3.6%). No statistically significant difference was found between the ICEF location and maternal age (χ² = 3.92, p-value = .1409). There were cardiac defects with an isolated echogenic focus in 24 of 758 fetuses (3.2%). Significant difference for CSDs was observed among groups of RV, LV, and BV (p-fisher = .0146).

Conclusions: Significantly more CSDs cases were identified in fetuses with ICEF in RV. Further investigation is warranted to examine the histological characteristics of fetal echogenic focus in the RV.

Keywords:

• Intracardiac echogenic focus
• fetal heart structure defects
• echocardiography
• low-risk pregnant women
• retrospective cohort study

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation Grant [No. 2017M613152].