Efficacy of routine fetal ultrasound screening for congenital heart disease in Isere County, France

Recent literature has revealed different percentages of prenatal detection of congenital heart disease. Therefore we chose to analyse the sensitivity of this screening in Isere county and to scrutinize to which extent factors like severity of the anomaly, extracardiac anomalies and maternal age infl uence the sensitivity. This retrospective study covers the period from 1989 to 1995. All the pregnancies with congenital heart disease in Isere county in France were reviewed and analysed, which was possible thanks to our reg istry of congenital anomalies. In this period, 316 cases were registered in the central database. We obtained an overall sensitivity of 34.8 per cent. By splitting the different malformations into two groups we got a detectio n rate of 53.7 per cent for major malformations and 26.7 per cent for other abnormalities. This difference is significant. Nevertheless, the sensitivi ty remains quite low. This result stresses the need for better education of investigators in primary care units, particularly because the prenatal dia gnosis of congenital heart disease has a major impact on the outcome of pre gnancy, which can be seen in the increased number of abortions in this grou p. Copyright (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.