Breech presentation: is there a difference in eye movement patterns compared with cephalic presentation in the human fetus at term?

OBJECTIVE

Our purpose was to characterize eye movement patterns in the human fetus at term persisting in breech presentation.

STUDY DESIGN

Studied were 11 fetuses in breech presentation and 12 in cephalic presentation at 36 to 41 weeks' gestation, of which the presentation remained unchanged from 32 weeks' gestation until delivery. With real-time ultrasonography we analyzed three measurements by means of the Mann-Whitney rank-sum test: (1) duration of eye-movement and no-eye-movement periods, (2) frequency of eye movements, and (3) proportion of horizontal, vertical, and oblique eye movements.

RESULTS

There were significant differences in the eye movement directions between breech and cephalic fetuses: horizontal (median 70.3% vs 80.2%), vertical (17.4% vs 11.0%), and oblique (13.1% vs 9.1%), respectively. No differences were noted in the duration of eye-movement and no-eye-movement periods or in the frequency of eye movements.

CONCLUSION

Eye movement pattern, in direction, of term fetuses persisting in breech presentation run on a different in-utero developmental course of neural control from those in cephalic fetuses.