NEONATAL MORBIDITY OF S. G. A. INFANTS IN RELATION TO THEIR NUTRITIONAL STATUS AT BIRTH

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Abstract
Consecutively born term infants (46) with a birthweight .ltoreq. the 2.3 percentile for gestational age were divided into 2 groups according to their nutritional status at birth quantified by the ponderal index (100 .times. wt/length3). Though all infants had a ponderal index below the 50th percentile, those with a ponderal index below the 3rd percentile (.apprx. 1/2 of the study group) were more frequently affected by asphyxia, hypoglycemia, hypothermia and hyperviscosity than their more proportionally grown counterparts. The identification of disproportionally grown small-for-gestational age infants by using the ponderal index as a measure of the nutritional status at birth is necessary because they constitute a high-risk groug among small-for-gestational age infants.