Objectives: Umbilical venous pulsation is an important sign of hemodynamic compromise, especially during fetal heart failure and asphyxia.
Design: The aim of this study was to determine of the blow flow in the middle cerebral artery and the umbilical artery in fetuses with umbilical venous pulsations.
Materials and methods: The investigation included 18 fetuses with signs of the intrauterine growth restriction and umbilical venous pulsations after 28th weeks of gestation. We evaluated cerebral-placental ratio (CPR) and pulsation index (PI) in the middle cerebral artery (MCA) and the umbilical artery (UA).
Results: We observed brain sparring effect in all cases of analyzing fetuses. There were 77,8% of abnormal flow pattern in umbilical artery. 13 fetuses had a single pulsation pattern in umbilical vein and another 5 had double pulsation pattern.
Conclusions: The coexistence of umbilical vein pulsation and abnormal flow pattern in umbilical artery is closely related to increased perinatal mortality.