Diagnosis of cardiac defects: where we've been, where we are and where we're going.

There has been tremendous development in the field of prenatal diagnosis of cardiac disease in the last 30 years. Early work centered on the technical aspects of providing an accurate assessment of cardiac structure and function. Techniques of fetal cardiac screening have been developed and utilized throughout the world. More recently, investigators have begun to explore the ramifications of fetal cardiac diagnosis by assessing measures of outcome. In this article, the field of fetal echocardiography, as a screening tool for identifying congenital heart disease, and its impact on disease outcome is reviewed.