An Attempt at Construction of Standards for Morphological Development of Fetuses

Abstract

The main aim of the present work was to construct reference data for estimating age of fetuses on grounds of their morphology (size). At the same time reliability of morphological estimates of fetal age was checked. Standards given in the present paper encompass ages from 20th to 42nd week of fetal life. They are based on observations of 1575 fetuses delivered alive. Chronological age of fetuses and newborns was ascertained as a menstrual age. In the present work also a group of 1260 newborns was used as a "control group” serving to corroborate adequacy of constructed standards.

The standards prooved all hitherto described in the literature regularities of fetal development of: body weight, total body length, crown-rump length, head circumference, chest circumference. High correlations obtained between characters enumerated above indicate strong developmental interdependences between them. They are this strong that in practice value of any character may be quite well estimated on grounds of any other value.

Corroboration of standards prooved their usefulness: there are no significant differences between average ages estimated from morphology and actual chronological ages, also values of characters in control group and standard material do not differ.