Evaluation of fetal kidney measurement as adjunct to gestational age estimation in second and third trimester

Abstract

Introduction: Gestational assessment in antenatal women is an important in deciding timing of delivery and good fetal outcome. Inaccurate GA estimation can lead to iatrogenic preterm or postmaturity,dysfunctional labor, surgical delivery, needless induction, incorrect test interpretation, and delayed or unsuccessful fetal care, all of which increase perinatal morbidity and mortality.One such unconventional metric for evaluating the GA under investigation is FKL. It is simple to measure and recognize. It has been shown to develop linearly during pregnancy on MRI, and it has a good correlation with GA . The present study was undertaken to validate the fetal kidney length measurement as an additional morphological measurement of fetal growth along with other parameters like BP, HC,FL, AC .The fetal kidney length can hencebe used as a valuable and easy diagnostic tool Objectives To assess the efficacy of ultrasonographic measurement of fetal kidney length in calculating the gestational age in second and third trimester of pregnancy.

Methodology It’s a Prospective observational study conducted at Dept. Of Obg Blde(Du) Shri Bm Patil Medical College And Rc Vijayapura on Pregnant women visiting outpatient for routine antenatal care with the gestational age of 20 to 40 weeks with sample size of 300 1st APRIL 2023 1st APRIL 2025(2 years) Data will be recorded in Microsoft Excel and analyzed using SPSS (Version 20).Results will be presented as Mean, SD, counts, percentages, and visual diagrams. For Categorical Variables: Chi-square test or Fisher’s exact test.

Results Out of 300 population 51.7%, n = 155 belonged to the 21–25 years age group with mean age 24.69 years 58.3% (n = 175) were multigravida, 52.3% (n = 157), had a fundal height corresponding to term size, indicating they were in the final stage of pregnancy. The mean and standard deviation of right left and mean of both the kidney length and found that mean and SD is 36.27(2.203), 35.26(2.36) and 35.755(2.24) for right kidney length, left kidney length, and mean length respectively. The p-values for comparisons across gestational ages were highly significant (p < 0.0001) Conclusion: fetal kidney length is a handy extra measure for figuring out gestational age during the second and third trimesters. FKL’s significance is clear, especially when traditional fetal biometric measures might not hold up