Prognostic value of antenatal screening.

Rates of stillbirths and first-week deaths have fallen steadily in Scotland in the last 30 years. Seventy-five per cent of all such deaths in the City of Dundee now follow the clinical condition of "antepartum hemorrhage," "premature labor," "poor fetal growth," and "lethal deformity," all of which are conditions associated with poorer environmental conditions which are worse in larger industrial cities. Therefore, we are concerned with these clinical situations and with fetal death and subsequent morbidity of children born in those situations. This paper describes in summary a planned study of antenatal screening with assessment of fetal placental hormones, fetal biparietal diameter, and other determinants of fetal well-being, the growth of the child and weight at birth, the quality of the labor, the neonatal state, and the ultimate quality of the child.