In the last decade 3D and live 3D ultrasound or the so called 4D (3D/4D) in examination of the fetal heart evolved very rapidly with the development of the new technique called Spatiotemporal Image Corelation - STIC, which enables the aquisition of a volume data concomitent with the beating heart. It appears that 3D/4D ultrasound in fetal echocardiography may make an important contribution to t...

OBJECTIVE To compare the effect of admission cardiotocography and Doppler auscultation of the fetal heart on neonatal outcome and levels of obstetric intervention in a low risk obstetric population. DESIGN Randomised controlled trial. SETTING Obstetric unit of teaching hospital PARTICIPANTS Pregnant women who had no obstetric complications that warranted continuous monitoring of fetal hea...

Fetal behavioral states are defined by fetal movement and heart rate variability (HRV). At 32 weeks of gestational age (GA) the distinction of four fetal behavioral states represented by combinations of quiet or active sleep or awakeness is possible. Prior to 32 weeks, only periods of fetal activity and quiesence can be distinguished. The increasing synchronization of fetal movement and HRV ref...

Gross fetal movement was detected using a lower frequency ultrasonic Doppler shift than that used in the study of fetal heart action. The movement signal was changed into deflection which was recorded on CTG chart simultaneously with the fetal heart rate (FHR), and was called the fetal actocardiogram. Visual analysis of the actocardiogram showed bursts of active fetal movements in the active fe...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the hypothesis that alterations in heart rate variability, peak systolic velocity variability and time-averaged velocity variability in the human umbilical artery may predict early signs of dysfunctional fetal-placental coupling in pregnancies that later develop pregnancy-induced hypertension. METHODS Doppler flow velocity recordings from the umbilical artery were per...

UNLABELLED It has been shown that short-term direct interaction between maternal and fetal heart rates may take place and that this interaction is affected by the rate of maternal respiration. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of maternal aerobic exercise during pregnancy on the occurrence of fetal-maternal heart rate synchronization. METHODS In 40 pregnant women at the 36th w...

We have isolated and sequenced a full-length cDNA clone of rat cardiac troponin I (TnI). The amino acid sequence of rat cardiac TnI is highly similar to that of other mammalian species in the portion of the molecule (residues 33-210) that is also homologous to skeletal muscle TnI isoforms. In contrast, a lower degree of similarity is present in the cardiac TnI-specific amino terminal extension ...

RATIONALE Fetal cells enter the maternal circulation during pregnancy and may persist in maternal tissue for decades as microchimeras. OBJECTIVE Based on clinical observations of peripartum cardiomyopathy patients and the high rate of recovery they experience from heart failure, our objective was to determine whether fetal cells can migrate to the maternal heart and differentiate to cardiac c...

Copyright: © 2012 Hornberger LK, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Abstract Fetal echocardiography has evolved considerably over the past 1-2 decades into an exciting field that bridges ma...