Fetal growth charts

September’s series on fetal growth charts took 16 posts to show why customisation is usually a bad idea. Some readers found them hard to navigate. This may help.

1. A tongue-in-cheek scene-setting about why it would be silly to use special United States baby weight charts.  And how some US paediatricians do exactly that (click here).

2. Technical stuff about scanning & how to create unbiased growth charts (click here).

3. The difference between population (reference) charts, and standard (healthy) ones (click here).

4. Customisation is not always bad. The principles of when it is a good idea, & when not (click here).

5. The theory (click here), & 6. the practicality (click here) of customising by race or ethnicity.

7. Customising on maternal weight (click here), 8. height (click here) or 9. parity & fetal gender (click here).

10. A digression on estimated fetal weight (click here).

11. Intergrowth-21 standard charts (click here) & 12. WHO standard charts (click here).

13. The Intergrowth/WHO plagiarism controversy (click here).

14. GROW customised charts (click here). Why almost everything about them is wrong. The reason I got embroiled in this topic.

15. Empirical studies (click here).

16. Summary (click here).

17. Addendum for twins (click here).

Jim Thornton