Relationship between Uterocervical Angle and Prediction of Spontaneous Preterm Birth in High Risk Patients

Abstract

reterm birth (PTB) is a growing global public health problem. PTB is the leading cause of mortality in children under 5 years of age, and is a direct cause of at least 27% of all neonatal deaths. Current data also suggest that cervical length (CL) measurement may help identify these women as it may accurately predict pregnancies at risk of preterm birth. Uterocervical angle (UCA) represents a novel ultrasonographic marker. During the last years several studies investigated the potential impact of UCA for the prediction of preterm birth. However, there is a scarcity in the published literature which determine whether the UCA correlates with the risk of spontaneous preterm birth PTB. Therefore, we performed the present prospective study in order to evaluate the ability of second trimester UCA to predict spontaneous PTB in at-risk singleton pregnant women. In the present prospective, cohort, study, we included 197 singleton pregnant women at Ain shams university maternity hospital (outpatient obstetrics clinics and emergency department. The mean age of the included women was 28 ±4.0 years. The mean BMI was 27 ± 3Kg/m2. In the present study, we found that there