[Is pelvic clinical evaluation still relevant?]

Establish specificity, sensibility of clinical pelvimetry using X-ray pelvimetry as the reference exam; Assess reproducibility of clinical pelvimetry comparing two physicians' findings.

During a longitudinal study of 29 months, we compared clinical clinical pelvimetry findings of 114 patients with results of X-ray pelvimetry. Reproducibility was assessed comparing pelvic measures performed by two physicians for 40 patients. Based on caesarean ratio of 7% due to cephalopelvic disproportion in our department, the required size of sample was estimated between 114 and 200 patients. Statistics tests used were the independent test of Chi-2, the Kappa coefficient, the T-test and discriminant analyze. A p-value of 0.05 was considered as significant.

The sensibility of clinical pelvimetry was found at 83.7%, specificity at 88.9%. Positive predictive value was 97.6% and negative predictive value founded at 50%. Best concordances were obtained for the measures of vertical diameter of Michaelis, Trillat diameter and assessment of sciatic spines and inominated lines. Clinical pelvimetry was reproducible with a kappa value of 0.62.

Clinical pelvimetry, due to his good specificity and satisfactory reproducibility is still relevant in case of unavailability of X-ray pelvimetry as it happens in Africans ressourceless countries.