Impact of maternal obesity and maternal overweight on the detection rate of fetal heart defects and the image quality of prenatal echocardiography.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the prenatal detection of four congenital heart defects (CHDs) and the image quality of five corresponding ultrasound planes among obese, overweight and normal-weight women.

Materials And Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of 54,846 pregnancies undergoing fetal echocardiography between 18 and 37 weeks of gestation in the years from 2000 to 2007. The women were categorized according to pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) as normal-weight (BMI < 25), overweight (BMI 25 - 29.