Through advances in education and ultrasound technology, it is growing increasingly more common to have heart disease detected before birth. In some fetuses, intervention for the defect before birth might lead to better outcome later in life. Such fetal cardiac interventions are only performed in a few specialized centers throughout the world.
The International Fetal Cardiac Intervention Registry (IFCIR) is an international group of medical centers and healthcare professionals who have joined forces to help each other evaluate and improve these still rare, complex, and innovative procedures. The aim of the IFCIR is to improve the care and outcome for mothers and babies when the pregnancy is complicated by congenital heart disease in the fetus.
Spearheaded by Dr. Anita Moon-Grady, the IFCIR’s first manuscript was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. This publication describes the creation of an international registry of cases presenting for fetal cardiac intervention, intended to compile technical and outcome data from a multicenter cohort.
Link to article: International Fetal Cardiac Intervention Registry: A Worldwide Collaborative Description and Preliminary Outcomes