Saira Jamshed, Farah Khan, Naureen Waleem, Munira Murtaza Khomusi, Adnan Anwar, Zainab S Khan.
The relationship between placental weight and birth weight: a cross sectional study.
Pak J Surg Jan ;35(4):342-8.

Objective: Various studies have been conducted outside the country to assess the association of fetal outcomes with placental weight but there is very little data available locally. Therefore, the objectives of this study was to establish and determine the relationship between placental and birth weight in the well-being and final outcomes of the fetus in Pakistan population. Material and methods: This was a cross-sectional observational study using non-probability convenient sampling technique carried out at the Obstetrics and Gynaecological Department of Hamdard Hospital, Karachi for a period of six months. Ethical permission was taken from the Institutional review board of the hospital. Healthy pregnant mothers with either singleton or multiple pregnancies having at least 3 ante natal checkups were included in the study. Mothers giving birth at gestational age less than 34 weeks or above 41 weeks and 6 days, with complicated pregnancy were excluded from the study. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. Quantitative data was presented as mean +- SD while qualitative was presented as frequency(%). Independent T-test was used to assess the significance and p-value was set at 0.05. Results: In the total of 200 pregnant females, mean maternal age was 29.29 +- 5.28 years with mean gestational age 37.14+-1.65 weeks. Mean gravid was 3.09+-1.63 and parity 1.41+-0.49, mean birth weight of their babies was 2.88+-0.43 kg. 109(54.5%) were male and 91(45.5%) were female. 126(73.3%) of babies that had a placental weight of <500 were found to have a birth weight of 2.5 kg having a significant difference of p-value 0.045. Conclusion: It was concluded in our study that there is association of the placental weight and birth weight. It may be attributed to the consequences of growth of the fetus and improved nutritional status of the mother. Furthermore, it was predicted that nutritional status of the mother had a significant association with the placental weight.

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