Persisting spongy myocardium. A case indicating the difficulty of antenatal diagnosis.

Persisting spongy myocardium (also known as noncompaction of the ventricular myocardium) is a rare and special form of cardiomyopathy. The few cases reported in the literature were detected postnatally and involved a high rate of cardiovascular complications. This anomaly of endomyocardial morphogenesis, which occurs during the embryonic phase at the stage of cardiac partitioning, is characterised by an excessive number of prominent trabeculae and by intertrabecular recesses within the myocardial wall. Antenatal detection is difficult in the absence of an associated malformation, which is the general situation. We report a case of antenatal cardiomyopathy which led to therapeutic abortion. The diagnosis of persisting spongy myocardium was made during fetopathologic examination.