Early Prenatal Diagnosis of Hydrocephalus

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Abstract
The aim of the present study was to assess the accuracy of various measurements of the lateral ventricles (LVs) for the early prenatal diagnosis of evolving congenital hydrocephalus. A prospective study was conducted among 61 normal pregnancies, and 20 pregnancies complicated by neural axis malformations, between 19 and 24 weeks' gestation. The following ultrasound measurements were obtained: atrial width (AW); atrial-width/cerebro-atrial distance (CAD); left ventricular width/hemispheric distance, and cerebro-frontal horn/hemispheric width (HW) distance. Atrial width or AW/CAD had the highest diagnostic accuracy of 97.1% between 19-21 weeks; and 100% between 22-24 weeks. The other two parameters had improved accuracy as gestational age increased. However, between 19-21 weeks the other parameters were below 90% in their diagnostic accuracy. These data demonstrate that the simple measurement of the AW, used either singly or as a ratio with the CAD is effective for the early prenatal diagnosis of evolving hydrocephalus.

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