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The advantages of earlier diagnosis give the family more time to adjust to the fetal cardiac and related extracardiac diagnoses and to make informed pregnancy decisions. If a severe fetal CHD is detected in the first trimester and pregnancy termination is selected, the intervention may have a lower risk for the mother's physical and mental health. Training medical staff is a crucial part of implementing obstetric ultrasonography services well, since effective patient care depends on their ability to use the equipment skillfully and interpret results properly. In many low-and middle-income nations, there is a scarcity of healthcare professionals trained to offer ultrasound services and one of the reasons for this issue is the lack of available lectures, simulations and instruments to explain how ultrasound sections are acquired. We propose an alternative method of visualizing the ultrasound planes of interest using three-dimensional volumes of fetal hearts reconstructed from seriate histological slices. This method may aid trainees in understanding echocardiography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to rapid technology advancement and increasing diagnostic expertise, fetal medicine is rapidly improving. Prenatal diagnostic advancements made it possible to identify structural abnormalities in fetuses as early as the first trimester of pregnancy. However, to validate the echocardiographic diagnosis that led to the pregnancy termination, the termination of pregnancy owing to severe fetal deformities should be audited in accordance with a correct anatomic diagnosis. Following the PRISMA declaration, a systematic literature search was done to find articles on post-mortem first trimester human fetal heart evaluation. Thirteen suitable studies were found using the search method. It is theoretically possible to examine the human fetal heart after death in early pregnancy however these methods are not widely available due the costs associated with the procedure and the equipment, the effects of tissue coloration and distortion brought on by the fixation and contrasting processes (for micro-CT), the current requirement for a skilled operator to acquire, reconstruct, and process the images, and data storage requirements greater than those of conventional clinical scans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Right aortic arch (RAA) is an abnormal embryologic development of the aorta characterized by its descendance on the right side of the trachea. This anomaly is accompanied often by other intracardiac and extracardiac anomalies and it is also known for potential association with genetic aberrations, most common being 22q11.2 deletion. The aim of the study was to evaluate the incidence of chromosomal anomalies and in particular 22q11.2 deletion in RAA. Moreover, we assessed the prognosis of fetuses with isolated RAA. Our second objective was to evaluate the prevalence of hypoplastic or absent thymus in RAA fetuses diagnosed with 22q11.2 deletion. We conducted a retrospective study of all fetuses with RAA over a period of 10 years diagnosed prenatally in a tertiary referral center in Romania. A detailed ultrasound was obtained in each case. We extracted the cases that were investigated genetically and selected the cases positive for 22q11.2 deletion. These fetuses were followed up until pregnancy termination or birth to confirm the ultrasound findings. Deletion 22q11.2 was present in 23.52% (4/17) cases. The incidence was particularly high when the fetuses presented a small thymus. In conclusion, we believe that all cases of RAA, including when isolated, should be referred for genetic testing and especially 22q11.2 deletion exclusion. Also, we suggest considering hypoplastic thymus to be a soft marker for this deletion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]