A reader has contacted us asking about the Hydrops fetalis or Hydrops fetalis syndrome. I had lost a seven-month pregnancy from this cause and was very distressed, so we have investigated a little about this serious condition that occurs in the fetus or in the newborn baby. We hope you can help her and all the parents who have been through the same.
Hydrops fetalis is very rare and occurs when abnormal amounts of fluid accumulate in two or more areas of the body of a fetus or newborn. It is a massive edema of the unborn baby or life-threatening newborn. It usually causes severe anemia, which can in turn cause complications such as fetal heart failure, total body inflammation, respiratory distress or circulatory collapse, in case the baby is born.
There are two types of fetal dropsy that are defined according to the cause that caused them: immune and nonimmune.
The immune fetal hydrops It is a complication of a severe form of Rh incompatibility, a condition that occurs after the second pregnancy when the mother is Rh negative and the fetus positive. While it is an easy complication to prevent today, Rh incompatibility causes massive destruction of red blood cells, which can lead to complications such as fluid accumulation, influencing the way the baby's body organs work .
Thanks to Rh incompatibility prevention treatments, Rh immunoglobulin injections in pregnant women, the percentage of babies who develop this complication has dropped tremendously.
For its part, non-immune fetal hydrops It occurs when a disease or condition impairs the body's ability to handle fluids. It is the most frequent of the two, there is a case of every thousand.
There are several causes for this type: heart or lung problems, infections, severe anemia (thalassemia) and congenital malformations or chromosopathies, one of those related to dropsy is Turner syndrome.
The complication is usually detected in the control ultrasounds performed on the pregnant woman, which shows high amounts of amniotic fluid, abnormally large placenta and swelling in the baby's belly, including the liver, spleen, heart or lung area. In these cases, it is recommended to perform an amniocentesis and keep strict control by ultrasound to determine the severity of the condition.
The probability of the baby dying before birth or shortly after birth is quite high (more than 50 percent). Hydrops often leads to the death of the unborn or the newborn shortly before or after delivery and the risk is higher in premature babies or in those with diseases at birth. However, it all depends on the degree of the condition and the treatment that is carried out in each case.
