The natural course of mild to moderate isolated fetal ventriculomegaly and its correlation with the postnatal neu-rodevelopment
XIA Qing-qing
LEI Ting
SHANG Jian-hong
LIN Mei-fang
Abstract：Objective To explore the changing patterns of lateral ventricle width in cases of mild to moderate iso-lated ventriculomegaly(IVM)during pregnancy and their correlation with postnatal neurological development.Methods We retrospectively collected cases diagnosed prenatally with isolated mild to moderate ventriculomegaly,and confirmed normal results from chromosome microarray analysis(CMA).We recorded the ultrasound characteristics of fetal ventricu-lomegaly and tracked postnatal neurological development.For cases with two or more examinations during pregnancy,we compared the changes in lateral ventricle width at different gestational ages to analyze the changing patterns and their rela-tionship with abnormal neurological development.Results During the study period,a total of 133 cases were included.Among them,126 cases(94.7％)had normal postnatal neurological development,and 7 cases(5.26％)had neurologi-cal abnormalities.The rate of non-recovery of prenatal ventriculomegaly in the neurological abnormality group was 85.71％(6/7),significantly higher than the 28.57％(36/126)in the normal group(P＜0.05).However,there was no statistically significant difference in the laterality and degree of ventriculomegaly between the two groups.Comparing the changes in lateral ventricle width at three gestational ages,we found that the overall changing pattern of fetal ventricular width gradually decreased with the progression of pregnancy(comparisons between mid-pregnancy,early late pregnancy,and late pregnancy,P＜0.0167).Subgroup analysis further revealed that the changes in lateral ventricle width in cases of single or bilateral IVM,or mild IVM,or normal neurological development all followed the above pattern.However,in ca-ses of moderate IVM,the reduction in lateral ventricle width occurred later,starting from early late pregnancy(early late pregnancy vs.late pregnancy,P=0.001;mid-pregnancy vs.early late pregnancy,P=0.043).In the group with post-natal neurological developmental disorders,there was no significant change in lateral ventricle width throughout the preg-nancy(P＞0.0167).Conclusion Neurological development abnormalities occurred in 5.26％of cases with mild to moderate IVM after birth.Among those with neurological abnormalities,fetal ventricular width did not show significant changes during pregnancy,and the rate of non-recovery of prenatal IVM was significantly higher than in the normal group.In fetuses with normal development,the overall changing pattern of lateral ventricle width gradually decreased from mid-pregnancy,with moderate IVM showing a later reduction in ventricular width,starting from early late pregnancy.Therefore,exploring the changing patterns of ventricular width is helpful for predicting the prognosis and providing person-alized and precise management for cases with normal CMA results and mild to moderate IVM during pregnancy.
Keywords：fetal ventriculomegalyprenatal ultrasonographynatural courseneurodevelopment
Publication Date：2024-01-28
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：6( 77-82 )