[Causative hormonal prevention of premature labour]

Labour is the most important caesura in the life of every human being, as it is the ultimate test of the child's fetal maturity to self dependent life, whose onset is connected with a violent change in the circulatory system and the commencement of breathing. Maturity assessment scale comprises such features as, among others: posture, angle forearm, pulling an elbow to the middle line of the body, distribution of lanugo, plantar creases, breast development. They can be objectified through their technical quantification the same way as we give the appropriate number of grams and centimeters when assessing the weight and length of the newborn. However, two equally mature fetuses call differ in mass by 800g, body length by 6 cm, and gestational age by 6 weeks. Relativity of pregnancy duration clearly demonstrates that only the quantitativization of maturity enabled its prenatal assessment on the basis of the rate of increase of the spatial parameters of the baby developing in the mother's womb. The date of the end of pregnancy is determined depending equally on the child's fetal maturity and the mother's readiness to birth, where the placenta plays an important role, as its existence coincides with the individual duration of every pregnancy. The use of industrially synthesized hormones means that those pharmaceuticals contain the whole mixture of side-products of the synthesis of the hormones. The biologically alien corticoid analogues like dexamethasone and betamethasone must, when exerting prolonged action, cause unwanted side effects. In contrast the ACTH-depot administration leads to desired production and secretion of corticoids through the control of the whole body function of the adrenals. Such naturally stimulated endogenous steroid hormones are free from unwanted side effects of drugs from the group of their synthetic analogues. An enormous body of evidence supports the link between the administration of corticotrophin and fetal body mass, maturity and age of neonates.