Comparison of adequacy of birth weight for gestational age according to different intrauterine growth curves

Micaely Cristina Dos Santos Tenório,Carolina Santos Mello,Juliana Célia De Farias Santos,Alane Cabral Menezes De Oliveira

doi:10.1590/1806-93042019000400011

Abstract

Abstract Objectives: to compare the assessment of the adequacy of birth weight for gestational age according to different intrauterine growth curves. Methods: across-sectional study, which analyzed gestational and neonatal information from 344 mother-newborn binomials. Birth weight data were analyzed using the International Fetal and New Born Growth Consortium for the 21st Century (INTERGROWTH-21st) and compared with the growth curves proposed by Alexander et al. and Fenton & Kim. Newborns were classified as small for gestational age (SGA), suitablefor gestational age (SUGA) or large for gestational age (LGA). Results: among the newborns, 51.2% were male, and 93.0% were born at term. Higher prevalence of SUGA and LGA and lower SGA was found by the INTERGROWTH-21st curves when compared to the references of Fenton & Kim and Alexander et al. Moderate agreement was observed in detecting birth weight by different growth curves. Conclusions: there was a lower detection of SGA infants and a higher screening, especially of LGA infants, in the INTERGROWTH-21st evaluation, when compared to the growth curves of Fenton & Kim and Alexander et al.

Highlights

Birth weight is one of the health indicators that most influences the health-disease process in the first years of life.[1]
For the birth weight classification of newborns of different gestational ages, the use of intrauterine and/or neonatal growth curves is recommended. These are usually based on specific population data,[4,5,6,7,8] which makes it difficult to compare across different populations.Among the various curves, we highlight the Fenton & Kim curves,[4] which were developed from a meta-analysis with a representative sample of newborns from studies conducted in six countries, being the most frequently used in Brazil in recent years; and the Alexander et al.[5] curves, constructed using data from a significant number of live births of single pregnancies of American women from different ethnic groups, using the last menstrual date (LMD) as the method for defining gestational age
We considered as a reference growth curve the INTERGROWTH-21st (2014),[9] because it presents a representative sample of the Brazilian population in its construction

Summary

Introduction

Birth weight is one of the health indicators that most influences the health-disease process in the first years of life.[1]. For the birth weight classification of newborns of different gestational ages, the use of intrauterine and/or neonatal growth curves is recommended. These are usually based on specific population data,[4,5,6,7,8] which makes it difficult to compare across different populations.Among the various curves, we highlight the Fenton & Kim curves,[4] which were developed from a meta-analysis with a representative sample of newborns from studies conducted in six countries, being the most frequently used in Brazil in recent years; and the Alexander et al.[5] curves, constructed using data from a significant number of live births of single pregnancies of American women from different ethnic groups, using the last menstrual date (LMD) as the method for defining gestational age. This article aims to compare the assessment of birth weight adequacy for gestational age according to different curves

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion