Development and validation of a simple algorithm to estimate common gestational age categories using standard administrative birth record data in Ontario, Canada.

This study provides a straight-forward algorithm for accurately estimating common gestational age categories that is easily adaptable for use in other countries.Impact StatementWhat is already known on this subject? Gestational age is often incompletely or inaccurately recorded in administrative health databases, despite being critical to the study of many paediatric and maternal health outcomes. Consequently, researchers must rely on various methods to estimate gestational age, many of these methods are either overly simple (i.e. assuming a uniform duration) or analytically complicated and difficult to adapt for new populations (e.g. regression-based approaches).What the results of this study add? This study, based on a population-based registry of all 1.8 million births occurring in Ontario, Canada 2003-2016, found that a simple, sex-specific algorithm using three commonly recorded birth record characteristics performs almost perfectly compared to a clinical estimate recorded near birth.What the implications are of these findings for clinical practice and/or further research? This study suggests that a straight-forward, sex-specific algorithm based on routinely collected birth record data is able to accurately estimate common gestational age categories (i.e. extreme preterm, <28 weeks; very preterm, 28-32 weeks; moderate-to-late preterm, 33-26 weeks; and term, 37 weeks of completed gestational age). This work will be of greatest interest to perinatal researchers using ro...
Source: Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology - Category: OBGYN Tags: J Obstet Gynaecol Source Type: research