Cervical length as a predictor of preterm delivery: gestational age-related percentiles vs fixed cut-offs.

Background: To determine whether preterm delivery is more effectively predicted by sonographic cervical length measurement using fixed cut-off or gestational age-specific percentiles.

Methods: One hundred and eight patients hospitalized for suspected preterm labor (PTL) were studied prospectively between the 20th and the 33rd week of gestation.

Results: Cervical length below 15 mm, 25 mm and the 2.

Prenatal diagnosis of isolated limb defects: an updated review.

Abnormalities of bone segments, either isolated or in combination with others, may affect any single bone. Given the relatively low incidence of such defects and the relevance of the clinical issues involved, it could be useful to evaluate all the diagnostic and procedural aspects that should be considered at prenatal diagnosis, when obstetricians are confronted with an event that is certainly unfamiliar to most of them: a fetus with an isolated limb defect. In fact, with comparatively infrequent abnormalities investigators often tend to neglect some diagnostic aspects that could be useful both in terms of prenatal counseling and of optimum management of the affected fetus.

Transabdominal antepartum amnioinfusion.

Objectives: The purpose of our study was to evaluate whether transabdominal antepartum amnioinfusion is associated with maternal complications during pregnancy and at childbirth.

Methods: Fifty-three pregnant women, hospitalized for oligohydramnios and submitted to transabdominal antepartum amnioinfusion between 16 and 34 weeks' gestational age, were compared with a historic group of 42 pregnant women treated conservatively.

Results: The study population was divided into two groups of women with ruptured and unruptured membranes (Groups A and B, respectively).

Sonographic assessment of amniotic fluid volume between 11 and 24 weeks of gestation: construction of reference intervals related to gestational age.

Objective: At present, most of the methods for sonographic assessment of amniotic fluid volume are unreliable in the second trimester of pregnancy, or else they do not present nomograms related to gestational age.

Design: The aim of this prospective cross-sectional study was to construct normal reference ranges of four ultrasound parameters for the evaluation of amniotic fluid volume which could be applied in the second trimester. For these parameters we calculated normal curve limits suitable for use in clinical practice.