The Left Outflow Tract in Fetal Cardiac Screening Examination: Introduction of Quality Criteria Is Not Always Associated With an Improvement of Practice When Supervised by Humans.

Abstract

Since 2016, the French CNEOF included the left ventricular outflow tract (LVOT) in the second and third trimester of pregnancy in addition to the four-chamber view and the parasagittal view of the right outflow tract. The objective of this study was to define quality criteria for fetal LVOT assessment and to perform a human audit of past and current practices, before and after the implementation of those quality criteria at a large scale. Seven quality criteria were investigated and rated from 0 to 1 during three periods of interest. Files were randomly selected from three centers, and average total and specific scores were calculated. LVOT pictures were present in more than 94.3% of reports. The average quality score was 5.49/7 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 5.36-5.62), 5.91/7 (95% CI: 5.80-6.03), and 5.70/7 (95% CI: 5.58-5.82) for the three centers in the three periods of interest. There was no significant difference following the introduction of the quality criteria, 2017 versus 2020, P = .054. Fetal LVOT images were present in most of ultrasound reports but the introduction of the proposed quality criteria under human supervision seems not associated with a significant change in practice.