[Sonographic diagnosis of fetal liver cysts]

The authors report on prenatal ultrasonic diagnosis of foetal liver cysts with a massively thickened and cystic placenta in the twenty-third week of pregnancy. Karyotyping and serological examination of foetal blood samples of the umbilical vein gave normal results. The liver cysts were tapped twice subsequently, because they displaced other foetal abdominal and thoracic organs. In the thirty-fifth week of pregnancy the foetus died due to malnutrition resulting from the changes of the placenta, the origin of which remained unclear.