Development of Z‐scores for fetal cardiac dimensions from echocardiography

Z‐scores for cardiac dimensions are well established in postnatal life, but have yet to be developed for fetal cardiac dimensions. These would be of real advantage to the clinician in accurately quantifying size and growth of cardiac dimensions and to the researcher by allowing mathematical comparison of growth in differing subgroups of a disease. The purpose of this observational study, conducted at tertiary fetal medicine and cardiology units, was to produce formulae and nomograms allowing computation of Z‐scores for fetal cardiac dimensions from knowledge of femur length (FL), biparietal diameter (BPD) or gestational age (GA) using fetal echocardiography.

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