Magnetocardiography for fetal arrhythmias

Abstract

The failing adult heart is known to revert to fetal patterns of contractile protein expression during pathologic remodeling, yet very little is known about the electrophysiology or electromechanics of the living human fetal heart during normal prenatal development or during stress. This owes largely to the inability to easily record the fetal electrocardiogram (fECG). While fetal echocardiography provides mechanical assessment of heart rhythm, it does not provide details of the electrophysiology of the fetal heart. These details, along with the genetics of fetal and neonatal demise, are emerging as potential leading factors in defining prenatal sudden death risk. While echocardiography has been utilized extensively for 20 years in prenatal high risk screening, it has not had the desired outcome in reducing overall fetal sudden death to the extent that sudden death has been reduced in the infant, child, and adult. Late gestation unexplained fetal death costs 26,000 fetal lives yearly in the United States and over 4 million fetal lives each year worldwide. Fetal Magnetocardiography (fMCG) opens a new window in fetal healthcare assessment. Fetal cardiac deaths may be preventable because the diseases that lead to these deaths are often treatable, especially if the sophisticated modern ICU monitoring and management techniques could be translated to the field of prenatal care.