Society for prenatal diagnostic ultrasound launches congenital heart disease global awareness initiative

The International Society for Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology (ISUOG) has recently announced the launch of a new global awareness initiative, Every Little Heart Matters – a campaign to raise awareness of congenital heart disease, at the Annual General Meeting of its International World Congress in Cancun, Mexico.

The aim of this global initiative is to build diagnostic confidence, simplify cardiac imaging, eradicate the fear of cardiac scanning, promote equity in detection, maximise early recognition impact and build confidence for parent advocacy groups.

As part of the campaign, ISUOG has made available a bank of resources that includes free educational chapters from their online encyclopedia, VISUOG, as well as patient resources and practice guidelines, so that professionals and patients alike have accessible education at their fingertips.

ISUOG’s flagship journal, Ultrasound in Obstetrics and Gynecology (UOG), will release the Virtual Issue on Congenital Heart Disease. The Virtual Issue brings together the latest research and expert guidance on congenital heart disease, including prenatal screening, management and novel diagnostic methods.

Commenting on this initiative, ISUOG President, Prof. Reem S. Abu-Rustum said: “As we celebrate our 35th anniversary, we are uniquely positioned, as the leading authority in ultrasound and prenatal diagnosis, to launch our first global initiative dedicated to congenital heart defects. This will allow us to utilise our distinctive attributes and combine our synergistic efforts to maximise the prenatal detection of congenital heart defects and improve neonatal outcomes.

“We are also soliciting new research on how to simplify cardiac screening, assess our global current status of prenatal detection, assess barriers to detection and how we may utilise AI for equitable access where the skill and expertise may be lacking.

“At the ‘heart’ of ‘Every Little Heart Matters’ is our patient: the mother and her fetus. We are hoping to advocate for our patients and families and give them a voice to share their stories with global communities, both within and outside of healthcare.”

Through their campaign, ISUOG is emphasising the importance of awareness of congenital heart disease and the necessity for prenatal testing, especially in lower-resource settings – to really promote equity in detection through simplifying the diagnostic process, so that it is not just patients in higher resource settings who have access to early diagnosis.

Ares recalled her experience of her son’s diagnosis; she said: “My husband is from Chile and when we were having our prenatal visits every week, he told me, we don’t have money to pay this and I told him, we are not going to pay anything, and he couldn’t believe it. So, we are very lucky in Spain.”

ISUOG acknowledges that there are gaps in equitable care and aims to address them at its global online forum in March 2026. The forum will be hosted alongside key stakeholders from global health organisations and world experts on imaging the fetal heart. A formal statement with a summary of recommendations will subsequently be published.

Source: ISUOG

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Staff Writer