?Can Thalamic Echogenicity by Ultrasound be Used as A predictor of Fetal Lung Maturity

Abstract

Neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) is the leading cause of death in the preterm babies, the WHO estimates its financial burden to be around ~40-50 billion$ per year worldwide. The gold-standard methods to assess fetal lung maturity are still the chemical, biological and physical properties of amniotic fluid obtained by amniocentesis. This study was conducted in Ain shams maternity hospital, on 238 pregnant women with singleton pregnancy, from 36-40w of gestation, with the mean age of the patients at 29.4ys, and mean gestational age at 38 weeks and 1day. Thalamic echogenicity, showed simple and non-invasive technique to evaluate the fetal lung maturity, has sensitivity (78.9%), specificity (77.2%) and diagnostic accuracy (77.3%) as regarding the prediction of the fetal lung maturity, and hence is recommended as a part of routine surveillance of the fetal lung maturity.