Background: Assessment of fetal growth is a major part of antenatal and perinatal care. It reflects the intrauterine environment quality. Developed countries seem to have larger fetuses than developing countries. Birth body length and head circumference (HC) of the newborn are crucial prognostic parameters in determining intrauterine growth.
Aim of work:We aimed to pilot a study to determine whether Fenton charts are applicable to Egyptian preterms. Materials and Methods: This single-center cross-sectional pilot study included 2001 preterm newborns < 37 weeks gestational age. A single measurement of weight, length, and HC was measured at birth from preterms who were not born to diabetic mothers, or mothers with hypertension, do not have chromosomal or structural abnormalities, congenital cyanotic heart diseases, intrauterine growth retardation, and multiple births. We created anthropometric measurements curves using Lambda Mu Sigma (LMS) chart-maker Pro (version 2, 2006) and compared them with Fenton growth charts for preterms.
Results:The weight percentiles of our studied preterms were similar to those of Fenton´s in all gestational ages. The 3 rd percentile of length among female preterms, and their 3 rd and 97 th percentiles for head circumference were significantly higher than Fenton's data (p = 0.018). Only the 3 rd and 97th percentiles of HC measurements for our studied boys were significantly higher than Fenton's measurements (p =0.031) and (p =0.016) respectively. Boys (n=1063) were heavier than girls (n= 983) (p = 0.003). Boys were taller than girls, and had bigger head circumference than girls (p = 0.009) and (p=0.000) respectively. Conclusion: Anthropometric measurements of our large studied cohort of preterms was in close agreement of the measurements of Fenton growth charts, apart from the larger head circumference encountered among our studied cohort. Fenton charts are applicable to Egyptian preterms.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.