Second- to third-trimester longitudinal growth assessment for prediction of small-for-gestational age and late fetal...

Detection of fetal growth restriction (FGR) remains poor and most screening strategies rely on cross-sectional evaluation of fetal size during the third trimester. A longitudinal and individualized approach has been proposed as an alternative method of evaluation. The aim of this study was to compare second- to third-trimester longitudinal growth assessment to cross-sectional evaluation in the third trimester for the prediction of small-for-gestational age (SGA) and late FGR in low-risk singleton pregnancy.

This was a prospective cohort study of 2696 unselected consecutive low-risk singleton pregnancies scanned at 21 ± 2 and 32 ± 2 weeks. For cross-sectional growth assessment, abdominal circumference (AC) measurements were transformed to z-values according the 21st-INTERGROWTH standards. Longitudinal growth assessment was performed by calculating the AC z-velocity and the second- to third-trimester AC conditional growth centile. Longitudinal assessment was compared with cross-sectional assessment at 32 weeks. Association of cross-sectional and longitudinal evaluations with SGA and late FGR was assessed by logistic regression analysis. Predictive performance was determined by receiver-operating characteristics curve analysis.

In total, 210 (7.8%) newborns were classified as SGA and 103 (3.8%) as late FGR. Neither longitudinal measurement improved the association with SGA or late FGR provided by cross-sectional evaluation of AC z-score at 32 weeks. Areas under the curves of AC z-velocity and conditional AC growth were significantly smaller than those of cross-sectional AC z-scores (P < 0.001), although AC z-velocity performed significantly better than did conditional AC growth (P < 0.001).

Longitudinal assessment of fetal growth from the second to third trimester has a low predictive capacity for SGA and late FGR in low-risk singleton pregnancy compared with cross-sectional growth evaluation. Copyright © 2017 ISUOG. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.