Professional paper
ESTIMATION OF TIME AND CAUSE OF PERINATAL DEATH
Marina Kos
Abstract
Skillful perinatal autopsy is extremely important because it provides informations relevant to the family, the physician and the community. Standardized protocols that should be followed to gain reliable informations contain photographs, radiograms, karyotyping (in selected cases), gross and histologic examination of the placenta, gross examination and autopsy of the fetus (newborn). According to the literature, stillbirth (defined as delivery of a fetus who has died in utero after 20 weeks’ gestation) accounts for about 50% of all perinatal deaths. Similar data were obtained also for Croatia in the past few years (stillbirth defined as gestational age >22 weeks and birthweight of 500 g and more). Gross examination should be performed in all cases of perinatal death, as well as the autopsy, because it reveals the cause of death in the majority of cases. In cases of stillbirth not enough attention is paid to estimation of the time of fetal death. Gross examination of the stillborn and histological examination of samples of fetal organs taken during the autopsy (with pathological examina¬tion of the placenta) enables us to assess fairly accurately the duration of time period between intrauterine death and birth. This can also have imporant medico-legal implications. The best gross and histologic predictors of the time between fetal death and delivery are listed, as well the histologic features of placenta that can be used as good predictors when timing intrauterine death.
Keywords
perinatal mortality; causes of perinatal death
Hrčak ID:
15605
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2004.
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