Isolated Single Umbilical Artery and Fetal Echocardiography: A 25-Year Experience at a Tertiary Care City Hospital.

OBJECTIVES

To review our 25-year experience with a single umbilical artery and fetal echocardiography to estimate the need for this test in cases of an isolated single umbilical artery.

METHODS

We conducted a retrospective review of 436 patients with a diagnosis of a single umbilical artery at our institution between 1990 and 2015. Two hundred eighty-eight women had both an anatomic survey and a fetal echocardiogram. Pregnancies with concurrent extracardiac anomalies or aneuploidy were excluded. The study population was divided into 3 groups based on cardiac views on the anatomic survey: normal, incomplete, and suspicious. Echocardiographic results were compared among the 3 groups. The primary outcome measure was the incidence of cardiac anomalies in the normal group at fetal echocardiography. The data were analyzed by the χ2 test or Fisher exact test.

RESULTS

The mean maternal age ± SD of the group was 29.2 ± 6.2 years; 44.1% were primiparas. The mean gestational age at diagnosis was 22.6 ± 5.2 weeks, and the mean gestational age at fetal echocardiography was 25.1 ± 3.6 weeks. In the normal group, 99.1% (230 of 232) of women had a normal fetal echocardiogram; the 2 abnormal cases were ventricular septal defects. Normal echocardiograms were obtained in 81.8% (36 of 44) and 25.0% (3 of 12) of the "incomplete" and "suspicious" groups, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Fetuses with a single umbilical artery, in the absence of structural abnormalities, and with normal cardiac views at the time of the anatomic survey do not warrant an echocardiogram.