Estimation of fetal weight in the third trimester by ultrasound.

A method to estimate the intrauterine fetal weight by use of ultrasound measurements of the fetal biparietal diameter (BPD) and the abdominal diameter (AD) is presented. From a consecutive series of single pregnancies the 238 pregnancies (3% of the hospital population) with ultrasound measurements obtained within 4 days before delivery were used in the estimation of birth weight. In addition, the estimated formula was applied on a test material consisting of 100 similarly selected pregnancies from the same hospital. To evaluate the expected selection effects, the birth weight for gestational age in the study group was compared with birth weight for gestational age in the total population. The weight could be estimated as 0.0351 X AD1.65 X BPD0.69 X exp(0.00196 X gestational age). Thus, the actual birth weight was within 83-120% of the estimated weight (95% prediction limits), with a residual coefficient of variation of about 9%. The gestational age could be omitted without major influence on the weight prediction. When applying the formula on the test material, 70% of the actual weights deviated less than 10% from the estimated fetal weight, but a tendency towards a slight overestimation of the weight for light for gestational age infants was found.