Hoe weet je dat je niet zwanger bent manual#

estimated fetal weight or abdominal circumference of less than the tenth percentile), (2) a singleton pregnancy, and (3) a minimum of two conducted ultrasounds since the diagnosis. Participants were included based on three conditions: (1) a diagnosis with SGA fetus (i.e. The consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) checklist was used to appraise the methodological quality of the study and guided the manuscript preparation. This study therefore aimed to obtain the views of women as regards the ultrasonographic monitoring of their pregnancies complicated by SGA.Ī qualitative study with semi-structured interviews was conducted in the outpatient clinic of the Obstetrics and Gynecology department of the Amsterdam UMC (location VU University Medical Center (VUMC)), the Netherlands. More in-depth exploration is required to understand women’s experiences and preferences for ultrasounds as well as to identify issues that impact their level of satisfaction. The importance of patient satisfaction with regard to the monitoring protocol is further stressed by a potential link between increased maternal pregnancy-specific stress and deteriorated fetal and neonatal well-being, suggested in a questionnaire study by Levine et al. Knowing the experiences of patients may help tailoring such protocols to their needs as well. After suspected SGA is confirmed by ultrasound biometry, the fetal condition is monitored by frequent ultrasounds in the hospital.Īs of yet, the optimal ultrasound frequency and content remain unknown, giving rise to varying protocols both within and across countries.

In the Netherlands, two types of ultrasounds are standardly offered to each woman: the first-trimester or term ultrasound (around 9–12 weeks of gestation), and the anomaly scan (around 20 weeks of gestation).

Hoe weet je dat je niet zwanger bent manual#

Assessment of fetal size is an established part of antenatal care and is generally performed during each visit by manual palpation of the uterine size. Women can be under hospital-led care from the beginning of their pregnancy, or they become transferred from midwife-led to hospital-led care during pregnancy or delivery, for instance in case of SGA. In the Netherlands, almost three-quarters of pregnant women deliver their baby under hospital-led care. The complexity of SGA is further exacerbated by the fact that no effective treatment exists, except iatrogenic delivery of the fetus to prevent intrauterine death or irreversible organ damage. Consequently, the cause and prognosis of SGA are often uncertain. However, in the non-anomalous fetus it is difficult to distinguish suboptimal fetal growth due to placental insufficiency from adequate growth of a genetically small fetus. Placental insufficiency is the most common cause in non-anomalous fetuses, and constitutes one of the leading causes of maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality worldwide. SGA is a complex and multifactorial condition. Consequently, SGA affects approximately 10 percent of all pregnancies, making it a common prenatal problem. Inge Jordans ( or the Ethics Committee (contact via for researchers who meet the criteria for access to confidential data.įunding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Ī fetus is generally diagnosed as ‘small-for-gestational age’ (SGA) when growing below the 10 th percentile at any given gestational age, measured by ultrasound. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: Data cannot be shared publicly because of the type of data, which concerns interview transcripts that could be restracable to one of the fifteen participants, and therefore are confidential. Received: OctoAccepted: ApPublished: May 1, 2019Ĭopyright: © 2019 Vollgraff Heidweiller-Schreurs et al. PLoS ONE 14(5):Įditor: Manuela De Allegri, Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg, GERMANY Citation: Vollgraff Heidweiller-Schreurs CA, de Boer MA, van der Meij KRM, Bax CJ, de Groot CJM, Henneman L (2019) Women’s experiences of monitoring the small-for-gestational age fetus by ultrasound: A qualitative study.