Digoxin for the treatment of fetal congestive heart failure with sinus rhythm assessed by cardiovascular profile score.

Objective: To evaluate the effects of digoxin on the progression of congestive heart failure (CHF), and to determine the best predictors of perinatal death in fetuses with sinus rhythm and CHF.

Methods: This was a retrospective case series of fetuses with CHF treated with transplacental digoxin, evaluated at baseline (before treatment), weekly during treatment, and prior to death or delivery, using a 10-point cardiovascular profile score (CVPS) consisting of echocardiographic markers of cardiac dysfunction: cardiomegaly, valve insufficiency, hydrops, and abnormal venous and arterial Doppler flow profiles. Composite CVPS and component markers were compared before and after digoxin treatment by nonparametric testing and best predictors of perinatal survival assessed by regression analysis and receiver operating characteristics.

Update in fetal cardiac intervention.

The severity of fetal heart disease progresses during gestation and may lead to significant in utero or postnatal morbidity and mortality. Fetal echocardiography allows us to detect heart disease early enough in pregnancy to perform fetal cardiac intervention that may change the natural history of some diseases. The principal aims are the prevention of hydrops due to congenital heart disease, recruitment of hypoplastic ventricles, remodeling of the fetal pulmonary vascular bed, or creation of a two-ventricular circulation after birth without risk to the mother.

[Fontan operation: short- and long-term risk factors].

The purpose of this retrospective study was to determine the outcome of patients who underwent a Fontan procedure at National Heart Institute "Ignacio Chávez", Mexico, from January 1989 to December 2003. We had 81 patients with a mean age of 7 years old: 53 with tricuspid atresia, 14 with pulmonary atresia and intact septum, 11 with univentricular atrioventricular connection and 3 with Ebstein's anomaly. An intra-atrial tunnel was performed on 61 patients and an extracardiac conduit on the rest.