Birth weight for gestational age: A reference study in a tertiary referral hospital in the middle region of Turkey

Abstract Background The purpose of this study was to establish a fetal birth weight curve for gestational age for patients who presented to our tertiary referral hospital. The curve can be used for epidemiological analysis and also to develop Turkey's first national nomogram. Methods A total of 68,255 live singleton pregnancies delivered during the study period in a tertiary referral hospital were initially reviewed in this study. The data were carefully collected from hospital records and patients' files. Gestational age (weeks) was assessed by either ultrasound examination or according to the patient's last menstrual period, or both. Sex-specific reference tables for fetal birth weight by gestational age were created, and statistical analyses were carried out for descriptive variables using SPSS 15.0 for Windows. Results Most newborns weighed between 3000 g and 4000 g. The percentile fetal birth weight curves for gestational age showed that fetal birth weight increased with the increase in gestational age. Typically, male infants were noted to have higher birth weights than female infants. When our results were compared with those of previous studies, it was demonstrated that values for the 10th percentile were higher in our study, whereas values for the 90th percentile were similar to those of previous studies. Conclusion To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study evaluating the correlation between gestational age and fetal birth weight with such a large sample size in Turkey. Therefore, the results of this reference study can be helpful in defining normal and abnormal fetal growth in Turkish newborns.