[Lecithin-sphingomyelin ratio "its prognostic importance to pregnancy" of diabetics (author's transl)].

The lecithin-sphingomyelin ratio was determined by the authors, applying Gluck's technique to 98 amniotic fluid samples of 55 pregnant patients with diabetes, depending on gestational age. Amniocentesis was preceded by ultrasonic placentography. Carbohydrate metabolism of this group was kept under optimum management and regulation. Its L/S ratio (3.1) was twice as much as that recorded from another group of patients (1.5) without adequate management of the carbohydrate metabolism. The rate of complications in the first group was below that in the second. -- It has been emphasised by the authors that variation in the L/S ratio along with gestational age depended not only on the severity of the given course of diabetes but, as well, on the management of the carbohydrate metabolism during pregnancy. They found that in any pregnancy under the conditions of diabetes the L/S ratio was an important criterion for diagnostic assessment of foetal lung maturity.