Early detection of fetal growth restrictions and its appropriate management

Abstract

The present study entitled “Early Detection of Fetal Growth restrictions and its Appropriate Management” is conducted in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. DFMC has significant correlation with perinatal outcome. In patients with loss of fetal movements only 41.4% were healthy, 6% were morbid babies n mortality was increased upto 37.9% out of which 34.5% were IUD. Perinatal mortality significantly increased to 43.9%in patients with abnormal DFMC compared to that of7%perinatal mortality in patients normal DFMC. DFMC is an age old screening tool which needs minimum equipment, cost effective, easily affordable and being an inherent way of materno-fetal communication promotes high compliance, can be easily understandable to rural illiterate population, so it can be recommended as a part of routine fetal surveillance specially in high risk pregnancies like PIH and IUGR in developing countries like us. Thus Daily fetal movement count (DFMC) chart, a tool that is inexpensive, uncomplicated and non-invasive, can be a clinically effective means of screening for fetal well-being after 20 weeks gestation. But as DFMC has low specificity leading to false positive cases, is not reliable predictor for further antenatal fetal surveillance. These patients require reassessment with more technical tests of fetal wellbeing like AFI and color Doppler.