Predictive analysis of maternal subcutaneous fat thickness for the risk of foetal macrosomia

Introduction: Foetal macrosomia is defined as a birth weight above the 90th percentile for gestational age or a birth weight ≥4000 g. Maternal obesity is one of the risk factors for foetal macrosomia. Maternal abdominal subcutaneous fat thickness can be used as a marker for central obesity. This present study was done to find association of maternal BMI and abdominal SCFT with macrosomia and to find a cut-off value of BMI and SCFT for prediction of macrosomia. Methods: 200 women, with live singleton pregnancy of 16-18 weeks of gestation were included after written informed consent. Maternal abdominal subcutaneous thickness was measured by ultrasonography. Women were followed till delivery and birth weight was calculated and babies with birth weight >4000 gm were diagnosed to be macrosomic. Data were analyses. Results: Spearman correlation between SCFT and neonatal weight shows a significant but weak positive linear relation (r= 0.4325, p- 0.000). Mean SCFT was significantly more in women with macrosomia (17.26 ± 2.6 vs. 12.35 ± 3.05 mm, p 0.0005 respectively) ROC curve analysis for ASCFT showed that ASCFT above 14.3 mm (AUC=0.970) predicted macrosomia with a sensitivity of 100% and specificity of 73%. Increased abdominal SCFT was significantly associated with increased risk of developing macrosomia. Using 14.3 mm cut -off value (by ROC curve) for ASCFT, the odd ratio of macrosomia was 30 (95% CI 1.6341-553.2106, p 0.02). Conclusion: Our study found that measurement of SCFT at 16-18 weeks is a significant predictor of macrosomia.