Could Ultrasonographic Measurements of the Umbilical Cord be a Predictor of Birth Weight? A Health Facility-Based...

Factors such as maternal demographics, anthropometrics, health status, and lifestyle are known to have direct associations with newborn birth weight. However, there is an indication that umbilical cord size measured using ultrasonography could potentially be a predictor of birth weight. This study, therefore, aimed to investigate the relationship between umbilical cord measurements and birth weight in Ghana.

A prospective, cross-sectional, quantitative approach was adopted for this study. A total of 107 patients were purposively sampled with an attrition rate of 9.3%, leading to 97 (90.7%) partaking in the study, aged between 17 and 41 years. The patients were recruited between 34 and 37 weeks of gestation during their routine antenatal care visit. Data was collected using a data sheet with some key parameters recorded, being: maternal age, gravida, parity, umbilical cord diameter (UCD), umbilical cord circumference (UCC) and umbilical cord area (UCA), which were manually entered into the IBM SPSS version 26.

The mean age recorded was 29.59 ± 4.83 years. The mean UCD, UCC and UCA were 1.53 ± 0.19 cm, 5.57 ± 0.41 cm and 1.86 ± 0.47 cm², respectively. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient (α) was used to assess intra-observer reliability, and it showed strong consistency and precision. The mean birth weight was 3.13 ± 0.27 kg. There were moderate positive correlations between UCD and birthweight (r = 0.53, p < 0.01), UCC and birthweight (r = 0.331, p < 0.001) and UCA and birthweight (r = 0.52, p < 0.001). There were positive correlations between maternal demographics and UCD and maternal demographics and UCA. The study found no correlation between maternal demographics and UCC. Multiple regression analysis of the predictors of birth weights in the study population was conducted. The model as a whole was significant in predicting neonatal birth weights among the study participants at F (4, 92) = 20.731, p < 0.001. The final predictive equation of the model for predicting BW was given as: BW = 1.849 + 0.021 × maternal age + 0.031 × parity - 0.066 × UCC + 0.652 × UCD.

The results suggest that umbilical cord size could be an important marker for fetal weight estimation. However, the less diverse small sample size and single-centre design of the study limit the generalizability of the findings.