Ultrasound dating and birth weight at term

BMJ 1994;308:1635 (18 June)

Letters

Ultrasound dating and birth weight at term

EDITOR, - Tine Brink Henriksen and Allen Wilcox¹ comment onour finding that the birthweight curve in our study was steeperat term than that observed in other studies.² We ascribed thisto our use of dates based on routine ultrasound scans insteadof menstrual dates to derive our weight for gestational agestandard.² They suggest that a constitutionally large fetu'sgestational age is overestimated by the dating scan and thattherefore bigger babies, with presumably larger birth weightsat term, would selectively be plotted against later gestations,thus creating bias.

While it is true that the study they refer to showed variationin biparietal diameter between small (<=10th centile) andlarge (>=90th centile) babies,³ the difference between theseextremes amounted to only about 1.5 mm at 18 weeks (figure 2in reference 3). This difference is equivalent to less thanone day's variation in gestational age ⁴ and would translate. . . [Full text of this article]

Add to CiteULike CiteULike Add to Complore Complore Add to Connotea Connotea Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us Add to Digg Digg Add to Reddit Reddit Add to Technorati Technorati What's this?

Relevant Articles

Thalidomide may not be a mutagen: M Kida
BMJ 1994 309: 741. [Extract] [Full Text]

Vitamin K for neonates: M Newburn and R Dodds
BMJ 1994 309: 668-669. [Extract] [Full Text]

Injection immunotherapy: L J F Youlten
BMJ 1994 308: 201. [Extract] [Full Text]

This article has been cited by other articles:

Teo, S. K., Denny, K. H., Stirling, D. I., Thomas, S. D., Morseth, S., Hoberman, A. M. (2004). Effects of Thalidomide on Developmental, Peri- and Postnatal Function in Female New Zealand White Rabbits and Offspring. Toxicol Sci 81: 379-389 [Abstract] [Full text]
Kohlhase, J, Schubert, L, Liebers, M, Rauch, A, Becker, K, Mohammed, S N, Newbury-Ecob, R, Reardon, W (2003). Mutations at the SALL4 locus on chromosome 20 result in a range of clinically overlapping phenotypes, including Okihiro syndrome, Holt-Oram syndrome, acro-renal-ocular syndrome, and patients previously reported to represent thalidomide embryopathy. J. Med. Genet. 40: 473-478 [Abstract] [Full text]
Ashby, J, Tinwell, H (2002). Thalidomide is not a human mutagen. BMJ 325: 1245-1245 [Full text]
Kohlhase, J., Heinrich, M., Schubert, L., Liebers, M., Kispert, A., Laccone, F., Turnpenny, P., Winter, R. M., Reardon, W. (2002). Okihiro syndrome is caused by SALL4 mutations. Hum Mol Genet 11: 2979-2987 [Abstract] [Full text]
Kida, M (1994). Thalidomide may not be a mutagen. BMJ 309: 741b-741 [Full text]
Newburn, M, Dodds, R (1994). Vitamin K for neonates. BMJ 309: 668b-669 [Full text]