The Importance of Fetal Heart Ultrasound Congenital heart disease is a common congenital developmental malformation. According to statistics, the incidence of congenital heart disease is 8‰ to 1%, and there are 150,000 to 220,000 cases of congenital heart disease born in China every year. Congenital heart disease is one of the most common major organ malformations and a major cause of miscarriage, intrauterine fetal death, and infant mortality. About 50% of congenital heart diseases are easily corrected by surgical or interventional treatment, while the other 50% are complex and severe malformations that are difficult to treat more satisfactorily with current cardiac surgery or cardiac medical interventions. Once a fetus with this kind of serious and complicated heart disease is born, it will not be effectively treated, which will bring a certain burden to the family, society and even the country, and the expensive treatment cost is not affordable for most families. Therefore, we hope that through certain prenatal screening methods, we can detect whether the fetus is suffering from serious heart disease in time, and we also hope to make more accurate diagnosis of fetal heart disease so as to facilitate timely and early treatment after birth. Current research shows that the sensitivity of fetal heart ultrasound in diagnosing fetal heart abnormalities is as high as 95% and the accuracy is over 85%. For most of the heart development anomalies, especially some serious anomalies with poor prognosis, such as ectopic heart, single ventricle, single chamber heart, permanent arterial trunk, ventricular dysplasia, dissection or atresia of the great arteries, severe tetralogy of Fallot and valvular atresia can be screened out. However, it is difficult to detect small ventricular septal defects, atrial septal defects, mild pulmonary stenosis, and mild tetralogy of Fallot. To diagnose congenital heart disease early and in time, it requires not only advanced examination equipment and experienced ultrasonographers, but also the cooperation and attention of pregnant women and their families. On the one hand, pregnant mothers should have regular maternity checkups on time, and on the other hand, they need to follow the medical advice and follow the obstetrician’s recommendation to make an appointment for a fetal system ultrasound or a special examination of the heart. For all pregnant women, it is necessary to have a fetal systemic ultrasound examination in the middle pregnancy, i.e. level III prenatal ultrasound diagnosis, which is especially suitable for patients with fetal malformations found or suspected in general prenatal ultrasound (level I) or routine prenatal ultrasound (level II) or with high risk factors for fetal malformations. Fetal systemic ultrasound screens the fetal heart for the presence of malformations of the developing heart. In cases of suspected structural malformations of the large blood vessels of the fetal heart, a special ultrasound examination of the fetal heart is recommended to further confirm the diagnosis. If a simple precocious heart disease can be completely cured by treatment after birth, such a pregnant woman can continue the pregnancy and wait for the baby to be born for treatment. In the case of moderately difficult precardiac disease, if the baby is treated with surgery as early as possible after birth, it will not affect her life in the future. However, in more serious cases of precocious heart disease, or combined with other organ developmental malformations, the child is born with poor treatment and a poor prognosis, and even if surgery is performed, the quality of life in the future is far from normal, and the obstetrician will generally recommend termination of pregnancy. This shows that whether the fetus has congenital heart disease and the type, complexity and prognosis of the heart disease are very important for whether the pregnancy should be continued or not. It is worth mentioning that many malformations do not appear in early pregnancy and that various malformations appear along with the progress of pregnancy, and heart malformations are no exception. A single ultrasound examination of the heart alone cannot rule out all malformations, and for minor developmental abnormalities, it is not realistic to make a definitive diagnosis with a single ultrasound examination alone. As a pregnant mother, she should understand that conventional ultrasound and systemic ultrasound cannot replace special cardiac ultrasound examinations; when a clinician recommends that a fetal cardiac ultrasound examination should be performed, she should pay attention to and cooperate with the examination, and follow the doctor’s instructions for regular review at the hospital. Who should have fetal heart ultrasound We have already talked about the importance of fetal heart ultrasound, but not all pregnant women should have this test. Let’s talk about who should have a fetal heart ultrasound.