Clinical Application of the Fetal HQ Technique in the Evaluation of Normal Fetal Cardiac Function at Different Gestational Weeks

Objectives

To investigate the clinical value of fetal heart quantification (fetal HQ) in the evaluation of normal fetal heart size, morphology, and cardiac function at different gestational weeks.

Materials and Methods

A total of 101 pregnant women diagnosed with a healthy fetus by fetal 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), and 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 fetal cardiac morphology and cardiac function at different gestational weeks.

Results

A statistically significant difference was observed between 4CV LED and 4CV TWED in normal fetuses 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 fetuses was found to be 1.25 ± 0.09. A comparative analysis of EF, SV, and CO in normal fetuses 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.