Purpose Of Review: This review examines the variation in clinical practice with regards to ultrasound estimation of fetal weight, as well as calculation of fetal weight centiles.
Recent Findings: Placental dysfunction is associated with fetal smallness from intrauterine malnutrition as well as fetal disability and even stillbirth from hypoxemia. Although estimating fetal weight can be done accurately, the issue of which fetal weight centile chart should be used continues to be a contentious topic. The arguments against local fetal growth charts based on national borders and customization for variables known to be associated with disease are substantial. As for other human diseases such as hypertension and diabetes, there is a rationale for the use of an international fetal growth reference standard. Irrespective of the choice of fetal growth reference standard, a significant limitation of small for gestational age (SGA) detection programs to prevent stillbirth is that the majority of stillborn infants at term were not SGA at the time of demise.
Summary: Placental dysfunction can present with SGA from malnutrition and/or stillbirth from hypoxemia depending on the gestational age of onset. Emerging data show that at term, fetal Doppler arterial redistribution is associated more strongly with perinatal death than fetal size. Properly conducted trials of the role for maternal characteristics, fetal size, placental biomarkers, and Doppler assessing fetal well-being are required urgently.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/GCO.0000000000000576 | DOI Listing |
BMC Pregnancy Childbirth
January 2025
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, University of Utah Health, 30 N. Mario Capecchi Dr., Level 5 South, Salt Lake City, UT, 84132, USA.
Background: Fetal growth restriction (FGR) is a leading risk factor for stillbirth, yet the diagnosis of FGR confers considerable prognostic uncertainty, as most infants with FGR do not experience any morbidity. Our objective was to use data from a large, deeply phenotyped observational obstetric cohort to develop a probabilistic graphical model (PGM), a type of "explainable artificial intelligence (AI)", as a potential framework to better understand how interrelated variables contribute to perinatal morbidity risk in FGR.
Methods: Using data from 9,558 pregnancies delivered at ≥ 20 weeks with available outcome data, we derived and validated a PGM using randomly selected sub-cohorts of 80% (n = 7645) and 20% (n = 1,912), respectively, to discriminate cases of FGR resulting in composite perinatal morbidity from those that did not.
Obstet Gynecol Clin North Am
March 2025
Department of Obstetrics Gynecology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA.
Maternal mortality has increased over past decades. The majority of deaths are secondary to mental health and substance use disorders, with over 80% being preventable. Screening for mental health should be offered to all pregnant women and should be administered through all trimesters and postpartum.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObstet Gynecol Clin North Am
March 2025
Recruiting Retention & Development, Maternal-Fetal Medicine Attending, Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, USA. Electronic address:
Mental health disorders impose a significant burden on individuals and society, with far-reaching implications that extend beyond personal suffering to substantial economic costs. Public health initiatives have traditionally focused on conditions like obesity and infectious diseases, but public mental health has only recently received comparable attention. This review explores the critical role of public mental health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Matern Fetal Neonatal Med
December 2025
Department of Obstetrics, Perinatology and Neonatology, Center of Postgraduate Medical Education, Warsaw, Poland.
Introduction: Small-for-gestational age (SGA) newborns are at increased risk of adverse neonatal outcomes and the risk is related to the etiology of growth restriction: highest in placental insufficiency, lowest in constitutional SGA. The aim of this study was to investigate if placental growth factor (PlGF), soluble fms-like tyrosine kinase-1(sFlt-1) or sFlt-1/PlGF ratio are efficient in prediction of adverse neonatal outcomes in SGA newborns delivered ≥34 weeks of gestation.
Methods: A prospective observational multicenter cohort study was performed.
Am J Hum Genet
January 2025
Department of Social Medicine and Center for Bioethics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Neurodevelopmental diseases (NDDs) are notoriously difficult to treat because clinical symptoms stem from developmental processes that begin before birth. Prenatal gene editing could fill the treatment gap for NDDs by targeting and permanently correcting the genetic variants that underlie these pathogenic developmental processes. At the same time, there is a risk of unintended edits to the fetus or the pregnant person that could result in serious adverse consequences that are difficult, if not impossible, to undo.
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