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Size for gestation in Aboriginal babies: a comparison of two papers
1Menzies School of Health Research, Northern Territory, Casuarina. dorothy@menzies.edu.au
Objective:
Two recent papers examining low birthweight in Aboriginal infants came to different conclusions about the role of size for gestation and preterm delivery in influencing the low birthweight proportion. As the two studies used different methods to estimate the infants' gestational age and to analyse the data, the results cannot be compared directly. This analysis combines the methods of both earlier studies.
Method:
Data collected in 6 Top End communities were analysed to calculate the proportion of infants who were small for gestational age.
Results:
Despite the high overall prevalence of preterm delivery from the midwives' estimates, 31.4% of infants fell below the 10th centile of weight for gestational age and sex. The majority of these infants were not low birthweight.
Conclusions:
The earlier report from the Top End of high proportions of small-for-gestational age infants cannot be dismissed as an artefact due to the method of estimating gestational age.
Implications:
Intervention programs to improve birth weights in Aboriginal infants need to address both conditions--small size for gestational age and preterm delivery--and need to target the whole population rather than high risk pregnancies.
