Italian standards for crown-heel length and head circumference at birth

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Abstract
Cross-sectional standards for crown-heel length and head circumference at birth are presented, based on 16,336 reference neonates born in six towns in North, Central and South Italy, between 1973 and 1981, and included in a multicenter survey of perinatal preventive medicine. Single liveborn infants, with no congenital anomalies, or mothers with no risk factor for pregnancy, such as diabetes, hypertension, vaginal bleeding, previous stillbirths or abortions, were considered as the reference group. These were treated as a sample drawn from one reference population, regardless or birthplace. Large differences in social and environmental conditions typical of the six towns appeared to exert negligible effects on the reference neonates'' dimensions. Unlike intrauterine growth charts published previously in Italy, these standards apply to any Italian neonate born between 32 and 43 weeks of gestation. Cross-sectional standards derived from anthropometric measurements of infants having different gestational ages should be regarded mainly as a tool for assessing size and proportion of neonates, rather than as growth charts for monitoring fetal development. This latter task should be fulfilled by longitudinal growth charts: to date, intrauterine ultrasonography has not provided data sufficient to replace cross-sectional standards.