The prediction of fetal lung maturity from the surface tension characteristics of amniotic fluid

Application of axisymmetric drop shape analysis and brewster angle microscopy for assessment of clinical samples from prematurely born infants with NRDS

“…Nowadays, the most popular and employed biochemical methods for surfactant maturity testing include determination of: protein/phospholipids [9], and lecithin/sphingomyelin ratios in clinical samples [10][11][12][13][14]; the number of the lamellar bodies in amniotic fluid [14][15][16][17]; the presence of specific surfactant proteins [18], etc. In addition, the most commonly used biophysical methods for surfactant maturity assessment are: black foam film method [19,20]; decreasing the surface tension of clinical samples extractions [21,22]; foam stability test [15,[23][24][25]; microbubbles stability test [26][27][28]; click-method for bubbles formation [29][30][31], etc. The summary of the results from all these analyses shows that none of the techniques can find widespread application into the clinical practice; these methods are slow, require large quantity of the clinical sample, high qualified specialists, etc.…”

Chronic Polyhydramnios: A Medical Entity Which Could Be a Model of Muscle Development in Decreased Mechanical Loading Condition

“…During the second half of gestation, the specific weight of the fetus is 1,040–1,050 g ( Lu and Hsu, 1999 ) and the specific weight of the amniotic fluid is 1,002–1,010 g ( Okai, 1986 ). The surface tension of the amniotic fluid is 14–58 dyn/cm ( Muller-Tyl and Lempert, 1975 ), allowing contact between the fetal skin and the walls of the intrauterine cavity. Intrauterine pressure of amniotic fluid represents the sum of air pressure in the atmosphere, elasticity of the walls of amniotic fluid and hydrostatic pressure produced by the amniotic fluid column height.…”

A New Method for Assessment of Fetal Lung Maturity

“…Other methods involve Gluck et a1 (I 972) have studied extensively determination of total phospholipids (Gudson and Waiti, 1972), free fatty acids (Schirar et al, 1975), or physical measurement of surface tension (Muller-Tyl and Lempert, 1975), and the stability of foam as an expression of surface tension, which was introduced by Clements et al (1972). Other methods involve Gluck et a1 (I 972) have studied extensively determination of total phospholipids (Gudson and Waiti, 1972), free fatty acids (Schirar et al, 1975), or physical measurement of surface tension (Muller-Tyl and Lempert, 1975), and the stability of foam as an expression of surface tension, which was introduced by Clements et al (1972).…”

“…of fetal lung maturity. Other methods involve Gluck et a1 (I 972) have studied extensively determination of total phospholipids (Gudson and Waiti, 1972), free fatty acids (Schirar et al, 1975), or physical measurement of surface tension (Muller-Tyl and Lempert, 1975), and the stability of foam as an expression of surface tension, which was introduced by Clements et al (1972). The main disadvantages of the presently available methods derive from the fact that only selected components of the surfactant are determined, and that the accuracy of the method is highly dependent upon the total amount of lipids in the amniotic fluid, false positive and false negative results are common (Jackson et al, 1975;Turnbull et al, 1974).…”