Journal of AdvancedMedical and Dental Sciences Research

Aim: Measurement of fetal kidney length as a parameter for gestational age in singleton pregnancy and its comparative evaluation with other fetal biometric indices. Methods: This prospective observational study was carried out in the Department of radio diagnosis. 80 women aged between 18 to 33 years with normal singleton pregnancies whose gestational age were confirmed by early ultrasound, were included in this study. Ultrasound was performed on PHILIPS HD7 (2.0.1) using a 3- 5 MHz curvilinear transducer. Ultrasound was conducted by two radiologists with ample experience and under defined scanning parameters. All cases were scanned twice by ultrasound. Radiologist one determined the average gestational age using Hadlock’s formula from foetal biometric indices viz, abdominal circumference, head circumference, femur length, bi parietal diameter, as well as carried out foetal anomaly scan of all cases. Results: There was a positive correlation between mean kidney length and gestational age as predicted by BPD, FL, AC and HC (P< 0.001). The correlation between gestational age and mean fetal kidney length is highly significant with Pearson’s correlation coefficient value of 0.98 and significance being P< 0.001 as shown in Table 1 also illustrates an extremely strong correlation with other variables as well like with AC (r = 0.913), HC (r = 0.987), BPD (r = 0.982) and FL (r = 0.990). Conclusion: Fetal kidney length shows a strong correlation with fetal gestational age, with a steady growth rate throughout pregnancy irrespective of underlying medical condition like intrauterine growth retardation.