WEDNESDAY, Oct. 7, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Ultrasonography (US) has very high sensitivity and low false-positive rates in identifying fetal teratoma prenatally, according to a study published online Oct. 1 in the Journal of Clinical Ultrasound.
Resul Arisoy, M.D., from the Zeynep Kamil Maternity and Children's Training and Research Hospital in Turkey, and colleagues retrospectively evaluated the diagnostic performance of US in the prenatal identification of teratomas and the perinatal outcomes of the fetuses with those teratomas.
The researchers identified 107 cases of fetuses prenatally diagnosed with a cystic or solid mass, tumor, or teratoma. There were 19 fetal teratoma cases. The sensitivity of US in identifying fetal teratoma was 100 percent and the false-positive rate 3.3 percent. Six of these pregnancies were terminated, in three cases the diagnosis could not be verified, and in the nine women who continued their pregnancies, polyhydramnios was identified in four fetuses. High-output heart failure was also identified in two of those fetuses during prenatal follow-up; none developed hydrops. Nine infants were born alive, but three died within the early neonatal period.
"The risk of chromosomal abnormalities is very low in fetuses with teratoma, and their prognosis depends on the location and size of the tumor and any associated perinatal complications," the authors write.
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