Ultrasound diagnosis and management of intra-uterine growth restriction

Abstract

Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) is one of the clinically important conditions to pay full attention to the fetus in womb. However, the process in diagnosing IUGR in daily clinical medicine has not been clarified. In research fields, most studies have been carried out from a retrospective point of view. In other words, the clinical data analysis was done by using the cases delivered as light for date (LFD). As long as the IUGR is not equal to LFD, the prospective point of view for diagnosing IUGR is required in clinical medicine. In this paper, we discussed how to predict and diagnose presumable growth retardation. Usually, ultrasound measurement and fetal weight estimation are used for diagnosis. We introduce one of the promising ways of standardizing fetal growth expressed by the ''deviation'' from the mean value. Growth velocity was also standardized by means of calculating the index of the deviation trend divided by gestational weeks.