Quantification of intrauterine malnutrition.

Small-for-gestational-age infants are a heterogeneous collection of growth-retarded infants. In the subgroup of intrauterine-malnourished infants an attempt is made to quantify the degree of malnutrition by postnatal measurements of length, weight and fat-fold thickness. In 48 clinically wasted and not-wasted term newborns, regardless of birth weight, the ponderal index of Rohrer (100 X W/L3) was determined and the deviation from 'normal' calculated. The deviations are correlated with fat-fold thickness and clinical diagnosis. A highly significant correlation gives support to the view that both ponderal index deviation from 'normal' and fat-fold thickness are useful parameters to quantify the effect of intrauterine malnutrition in newborns.