The Utility of Routine Echocardiography in Newborn Infants with a Persistent Oxygen Requirement .
In the era of antenatal screening for congenital heart disease (CHD), infants presenting with an undiagnosed significant CHD are rare. However, term infants admitted with an initial diagnosis of TTN and a prolonged oxygen requirement often undergo an echocardiogram. We aimed to assess whether this practice yields any additional cases of undiagnosed CHD. We performed a retrospective chart review over a three year period [2013 – 2015] of term (> 36 weeks) infants admitted to the NICU for ≥ 5 days with a diagnosis of TTN and received an echocardiogram. The presence of CHD on the echocardiogram was assessed. Forty-seven infants were enrolled. The median age of echocardiogram was day four [2 – 8]. No infant had a diagnosis of significant CHD on the postnatal echocardiogram. A small muscular VSD was identified in two infants. Routine echocardiography for this cohort of infants to rule out major CHD appears to be unwarranted.
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The original article is available at http://imj.ie/Published Citation
Walsh1 N, Breathnach C, El-Khuffash A, Franklin O, Corcoran JD. The Utility of Routine Echocardiography in Newborn Infants with a Persistent Oxygen Requirement. Irish Medical Journal. 2018;111(5):755Publication Date
2018-05-01Department/Unit
- Paediatrics