A new score for postnatal clinical assessment of fetal maturity in newborn infants.

OBJECTIVES

To investigate the clinical repeatability of Klimek's method of fetal maturity assessment in newborns.

METHODS

A cohort of 800 consecutive singletons was assessed immediately after birth by a pediatrician, who was unaware of the infants' gestational age. The assessment, according to Klimek's method, consisted of six criteria to evaluate posture and skin appearance, and each variable was scored from 0 to 2 points. After dividing the material into two identical groups, the results were compared with those obtained by means of Ballard's method.

RESULTS

Statistical analysis did not show statistically significant differences between the compared averages in both groups. A significant correlation between the clinically compared methods of fetal maturity grading was found (r> or =0.69, t> or =19, and P<0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

Klimek's method of fetal maturity assessment offers a possibility of objective evaluation of maturity immediately after birth. The clinical methods used to date do not have such advantages. Moreover, they require the evaluation of 12-34 parameters, their point range is more complex and their results are given on the scale of 10-50 points. In each of the applied divisions of observed newborns, there was found a high, statistically significant correlation between the indexes evaluating maturity by means of both comparable methods (i.e. Ballard and Klimek scores), which do not take into account weight and fetal age, but refer directly to fetal maturity. The new scale, which has been proposed, is simple and produces comparable results encompassing full maturity in the range of only 6-12 points.