Treatment of growth-restricted human fetuses with amino acids and glucose supplementation through a chronic fetal intravascular perinatal port system.

Objective: Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) carries an increased risk of mortality and morbidity. The accepted procedure to treat IUGR fetuses is premature delivery, which may increase neonatal mortality and morbidity and retards neonatal brain development.

Material And Methods: We report here on intravascular supplementation with amino acids and glucose of an IUGR human fetus at 33 weeks of gestation with oligohydramnios and placental insufficiency using the port system (Norfolk Medical Products, Skokie, Ill.

Cardiac output and blood flow volume redistribution during acute maternal hypoxia in fetal sheep.

Objective: Acute hypoxia is one of the main causes of poor neonatal outcome. The aim of this study was the investigation of cardiac output (CO) and blood flow redistribution following induction of acute hypoxia in a fetal sheep model.

Method: We investigated 10 fetal sheep between 108 and 130 days of gestation.

Prenatal diagnosis of a recombinant chromosome 7 resulting in trisomy 7q11.22 --> qter.

Prenatal diagnosis of trisomy 7 is complex due to only a few reported cases. We report here on a stillborn boy with very large duplication of 7q11.22 --> qter, encompassing almost the entire long arm of chromosome 7.

Two new approaches in intrauterine tracheal occlusion using an ultrathin fetoscope.

Objectives/hypothesis: To introduce and establish a new approach in minimal invasive fetoscopic surgery in order to reduce access trauma and the iatrogenic preterm premature rupture of the membranes (PPROM) as a major complication of intrauterine treatment of congenital diaphragmatic hernia.

Methods: In total, 27 pregnant sheep were operated on using fetoscopes with 1.2 and 1.

A combination of umbilical artery PI and normalized blood flow volume in the umbilical vein: venous-arterial index for the prediction of fetal outcome.

Objective: The objective was to assess the diagnostic power of the umbilical venous-arterial index (VAI) as a combination of the pulsatility index in the umbilical artery and the normalized blood flow volume in the umbilical vein for the prediction of poor fetal outcome.

Study Design: This was a prospective clinical study in which the umbilical artery PI (UAPI), the normalized umbilical vein blood volume flow rate (nUV; ml/min/kg estimated fetal body weight), the venous-arterial index (VAI; nUV/UAPI), and the pulsatility index (PI) in the umbilical artery (UA), uterine artery (utA), middle cerebral artery (MCA), and aorta were determined in 181 fetuses once (at between 17 and 41 weeks' gestation) during pregnancy using standard Doppler ultrasound equipment. A risk score based on the umbilical blood pH, the 1 min Apgar score, birth weight, duration of gestation, type of postpartum respiratory support, and referral to the pediatric department was used, and fetuses were assigned to a control or a pathological group accordingly.