Wang X, Hui LL, Cole TJ, Nelson EAS, Lam HS. Fitness of INTERGROWTH-21st birth weight standards for Chinese-ethnicity babies.
Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed 2023;
108:517-522. [PMID:
36854618 DOI:
10.1136/archdischild-2022-325066]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/27/2022] [Accepted: 02/16/2023] [Indexed: 03/02/2023]
Abstract
OBJECTIVE
To determine the fitness of the INTERGROWTH-21st birth weight standards (INTERGROWTH21) for ethnic Chinese babies compared with a local reference (FOK2003).
DESIGN
Population-based analysis of territory-wide birth data.
SETTING
All public hospitals in Hong Kong.
PARTICIPANTS
Live births between 24 and 42 complete weeks' gestation during 2006-2017.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Babies' birth weight Z-scores were calculated using published methods. The two references were compared in three aspects: (1) the proportions of large-for-gestational-age (LGA) or small-for-gestational-age (SGA) infants, (2) the gestation-specific and sex-specific mean birth weight Z-scores and (3) the predictive power for SGA-related complications.
RESULTS
488 896 infants were included. Using INTERGROWTH21, among neonates born <33 weeks' gestation, the mean birth weight Z-scores per week were closer to zero (-0.2 to 0.05), while most of them were further from zero (0.06 to 0.34) after excluding infants with a high risk of abnormal intrauterine growth. Compared with FOK2003, INTERGROWTH21 classified smaller proportions of infants as SGA (8.3% vs 9.6%) and LGA (6.6% vs 7.9%), especially SGA among preterm infants (13.1% vs 17.0%). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve for predicting SGA-related complications was greater with FOK2003 (0.674, 95% CI 0.670 to 0.677) than INTERGROWTH21 (0.658, 95% CI 0.655 to 0.661) (p<0.001).
CONCLUSIONS
INTERGROWTH21 performed less well than FOK2003, a local reference for ethnic Chinese babies, especially in infants born <33 weeks' gestation. Although the differences are clinically small, both these references performed poorly for extremely preterm infants, and thus a more robust chart based on a larger sample of appropriately selected infants is needed.
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