The uterine artery blood flow velocity waveform: reproducibility and results in normal pregnancy.

Uterine artery blood flow velocity waveforms (FVW) were recorded longitudinally in normal pregnancies (n = 41) at 4-week intervals from a gestational age of 18 weeks onwards. Furthermore, reproducibility of the uterine artery FVWs and the relation with maternal heart rate (MHR) was studied. The uterine artery FVW showed a low resistance flow pattern already from 18 weeks onwards, with high diastolic flow velocity relative to systolic flow velocity. Mean values (+/- S.D.) for the Pulsatility-Index (PI) before and after 32 weeks of normal pregnancy were 0.73 (+/- 0.17) and 0.67 (+/- 0.15) respectively; for the A/B ratio these values were 1.98 (+/- 0.30) and 1.85 (+/- 0.25) respectively. Intra- and interobserver reproducibility could be established for uterine artery FVW analysis. A varying time-period between the FVWs (0-4 min), repositioning of the flow probe and different observers did not cause any systematic effect on the PI, although variation increased in case of a longer time-period between the FVWs. Overall variation of the PI in the reproducibility experiments appeared to be caused more by inter- than intrapatient variance. Inter- and intrapatient variance were in the same range for the results of the longitudinal study. A statistically significant, inverse relationship between uterine artery PI and MHR could be established in a majority of cases. The mean regression coefficient for all patients of the reproducibility study was -0.0061; PI decreases with 0.0061 when maternal heart rate increases 1 beats/min.