A new rapid slide agglutination test for amniotic fluid phosphatidylglycerol: laboratory and clinical correlation.

A new rapid slide agglutination test (Amniostat-FLM/AFLM) for amniotic fluid phosphatidylglycerol has been developed. One hundred ninety-three samples of amniotic fluid were tested for lecithin/sphingomyelin (L/S) ratio and phosphatidylglycerol by thin-layer chromatography and fluorescence polarization and compared with the AFLM. All four tests agreed in 123/193 cases. Phosphatidylglycerol and AFLM were concordant in 176/193 cases. From these samples, data were available on 105 neonates, of whom 74 were delivered within 72 hours of amniocentesis. All positive AFLM tests were associated with absence of hyaline membrane disease, of 22 negative tests, eight babies had hyaline membrane disease. Thus, preliminarily, it appears that this is a useful, rapid test for assessing fetal lung maturity, which like other tests is reliable when indicating maturity but has a high incidence of falsely immature results.