The Critical Role of Pulse Oximetry Screening for Congenital Heart Disease and Patent Ductus Arteriosus in Newborns

Introduction: Congenital heart disease (CHD) is diagnosed with high prevalence. Pulse oximetry and clinical examination are screening tools to aid in obtaining a CHD diagnosis.

Materials and methods: We conducted a retrospective longitudinal study over three years, screening 1188 newborns admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) during the first 72 hours of life.

Results: Two hundred one newborns were diagnosed with CHD. Almost all (n=198) had a positive screening test during the 72 hours, while three had a negative screening test but were later diagnosed using echocardiography. The prevalence rate of CHD was 16.67%. A confusion matrix was constructed with 198 true positives (TP), 3 false negatives (FN), no false positives (FP), and 987 true negatives (TN). The sensitivity of the screening test was 98.51%, while the specificity was 100%, with no false positives. In our study, a total of nine deaths occurred due to CHD or complications of CHD. Using the Kaplan-Meier method, the survival probability appeared to be slightly above 0.9 (95.5%), indicating that almost all patients survived past 72 hours after being diagnosed with CHD.

Conclusion: Pulse oximetry is an effective, low-cost, and easy-to-use method that is useful for assessing and diagnosing CHD.