[Echographic diagnosis of gestational age and law 194]

The authors examine the various biometrics parameters evidentiable at the 13th week of pregnancy, which is so important age for the limits imposed by the law 194, that regulates the legal abortion. These findings are studied as for their evidentiability and their diagnostic predictivity aiming to single out the most reliable. As for the results obtained examining the singular parameters, the authors conclude that the goal of the echographist is to search for the fetal CRL and BPD: they are characterised of an optimum predictivity and a good evidentiability, besides they provide direct data about the embryo dimensions. If these measurements are not evidentiable the operator can base his diagnosis on the other parameters that do not refer directly to the embryo. At last the authors sustain that who carried out the ultrasound examination should not "force" the diagnosis trying to establish the gestational age with excessive exactness; on the contrary he must limit himself to provide the evidentiable biometric values, indicating the minimum and the maximum age that is compatible with them. It is up to the physician who performs the termination of pregnancy to draw the correlations about the gestational age.