Correlation between gestational age and head circumference in third trimester

Abstract

Introduction: In today’s advanced medical world maternal child health care the important part of the health care system and import components is estimation fetal gestational age. Gestational age is age of unborn baby, defined in weeks as beginning from first day of last menstrual period prior to conception. Trimester is period of three calendar months during a pregnancy. Clinically, the gestational period is divided into three trimesters. Estimation of gestational age and thereby forecasting expected date of delivery (EDD) is not only concern of the Individual but it is invaluable in the diagnosis of intrauterine growth retardation of fetus and obstetric planning other fetal parameters are useful Hence; we planned the present study to estimate fetal HC length for measuring the gestational age and compare it with other parameters. Material and methods: The study Correlation between gestational age and head circumference in Third trimester was carried out at Govt. Medical College and Hospital, Nanded, between July 2011 to July 2013 period . The study included 132 pregnant women the data so collected was then subjected to statistical analysis by expert statistician with the help of SYSTAT Crainsoft version 12 software. Standard statistical methods, parametric methods were used for the evaluation and significance. Results: As the value of R is 0.8612, the variation in fetal growth on the basis of Head Circumference during third trimester can be explained to the extent of 86.12%. The value of R is highly significant (Student’s‘t’ test value = 228.92, p<0.0001, very highly significant) showing that there is statistically highly Positive or strong positive association between gestational age and head Circumference Conclusion: From the present study Head Circumference found to be statistically highly significant. The regression equations derived for growth parameter for estimating gestational age in a normally developing fetus, increase with gestational age, showed good correlation with gestational age. In Present study, Head circumference is the sensitive parameter and a result of present study was comparable with previous studies.