Effectiveness of neonatal pulse oximetry screening for detection of congenital heart disease in daily clinical routine practice / Shimaa Medhat Abdelatief Ahmed ; Supervised Eman Abdelazim Sharaf , Magda Mahmoud Sedky Badawy , Antoine Fakhry Abdelmassih

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Pediatrics

Background: The incidence of congenital heart disease is 9 /1000 live birth. Early detection of congenital heart defects might improve the outcome of newborn babies. Echocardiography is mainly used as diagnostic tool rather than screening tool due to cost effectiveness, but pulse oximetry being a non- invasive tool may be used for screening purposes. Objective: The purpose of this study is to evaluate the capability of pulse oximetry screening for early detection of congenital heart disease in asymptomatic newborns. Methods: Pulse oximetry screening was performed on 200 asymptomatic newborns. They were screened with pulse oximetry in the first 24 hours after birth. All positive newborns were screened with echocardiography. Data regarding true and false positives as well as negatives were collected and analyzed. Results: With an oxygen saturation cut off of 95% pulse oximetry screening helped to diagnose 26 cases with congenital heart diseases. Study results revealed that best cut off value for pre-ductal O2 saturation in relation to echocardiographic finding was 94% with standard error = 0.065 and 95% confidence interval = 0.738 - 0.992, and revealed that best cut off value for post-ductal O2 saturation in relation to echocardiographic finding was 92% with standard error = 0.030 and 95% confidence interval = 0.916 - 1.000

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