Yamamoto H, Fukasawa Y, Ohashi N, et al. - In patients with primary congenital dilated cardiomyopathy (PCDCM), researchers used fetal and perinatal data to study the prediction of postnatal prognosis and to estimate the incidence of this disease. In a multicenter retrospective study of eight patients with PCDCM, correlations between fetal or perinatal data and postnatal clinical course were examined. In a population-based study, the incidence was calculated. The authors discovered that all participants in the study developed heart failure at a median of 8 days (range, 0-43 days), and six patients died or required extracorporeal artificial heart therapy at a median of 67 days (range, 0-92 days). Although PCDCM exhibits poor prognosis, cardiothoracic area ratio by fetal echocardiography, body weight at birth and Apgar score correlates with the timing of the onset of heart failure, and therefore these indicators may be useful for peri- and postnatal management.