Study Of The Measurement Of Fetal Lateral Ventricle With Ultrasonography To Estimate The Brain Malformations

Objective: To study the value of the measurement of fetal lateral ventricle with the 2D ultrasound to estimate the brain malformations of fetuses.Materials and methods: 209 pregnant women in 20～40 weeks gestation by routine ultrasound examination, aged 23-34 years, were studied during December 2005 to June 2006.The instruments were SSD 1400 ultrasound instrument of AlOKA company and LOGIQ 500 color Doppler ultrasound instrument of GE company. The type of probe was convex array scan and the frequency of probe was 3.5 MHz.The routine ultrasound examinations of obstetrics were given pregnant women .The width of lateral ventricle was measured with 2D ultrasound at lateral ventricle plane. The fetus whose width of LV was 10mm was defined positive, The advice of Magnetic Resonance (MR) Imaging or re-examined Ultrasound was given to positive pregnant women. The statistical analysis was completed with software SPSS 10.0.Results: Of 209 fetuses, there were 195 normal fetuses, 14 abnormal ones. There were no correlation between the width of LV and the gestational age in 195 normal fetuses (P>0.05).There were 171 fetuses whose LV<10mm and LV>10mm in 38 fetuses of which 28 pregnant women accepted re-examined ultrasound and 4 pregnant women accepted MR imaging. 12 cases were found to be brain malformations and the others were normal.Using LV>10mm to diagnosis fetal ventriculomegaly, the sensitivity was 85.72%, the specificity was 87.69%, the positive predictive value was 31.57% and the negative predictive value was 98.98%. Using LV>8mm to diagnosis fetal ventriculomegaly, the sensitivity was 100%, the...