Fetal Biometry Assessment of Femur Length for Pregnant Women in Dammam, Saudi Arabia

This study was conducted to establish a new reference chart and equation for femur length (FL) based on Saudi pregnant women in Dammam, and to compare it with references from different populations. This cross-sectional study involved 400 women with singleton pregnancies who attended the Maternal and Children Hospital in Dammam in 2018, which confirmed their gestational age (GA). For this study, each woman was scanned once only, between 14th to 40th completed weeks ofgestation using Ultrasound machine Voluson E10 (GE Healthcare, Austria) with a 2–5 MHz convex abdominal probe. The SPSS software version 24 (descriptive, regression analysis, and paired t-test) was used for analysis. The mean maternal age was 29 ± 5.92 years. The mean value of FL in second trimesters was 33.75 mm while it reaches to 62.80 mm in third trimesters. At 14th and 40th weeks, mean values (±SD) for FL were 14.85 (±2.58) mm and 78.75 (±1.97) mm. The quadratic regression models were fitted to estimate the mean and separate linear regression to estimate the standard deviation at each GA. The comparison of the FL values of Saudi chart shows a significant difference with the common references used. The FL values in this study were significantly higher than the corresponding values of USA, French, UK, German, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Iran, Bangladesh, Egypt, and Thailand but lower than China and Nigerian. Thus, these new FL values are highly recommended to be used by the medical practitioner as the reference range of fetus biometry for Saudi Arabia population regarding providing better healthcare and wellbeing of the maternal and fetuses.