BREECH PRESENTATION - IS THERE A DIFFERENCE IN EYE-MOVEMENT PATTERNS COMPARED WITH CEPHALIC PRESENTATION IN THE HUMAN FETUS AT TERM

OBJECTIVE: Our purpose was to characterize eye movement patterns in th e human fetus at term persisting in breech presentation. STUDY DESIGN: Studied were 11 fetuses in breech presentation and 12 in cephalic pre sentation at 36 to 41 weeks' gestation, of which the presentation rema ined unchanged from 32 weeks' gestation until delivery. With real-time ultrasonography we analyzed three measurements by means of the Mann-W hitney rank-sum test: (1) duration of eye-movement and no-eye-movement periods, (2) frequency of eye movements, and (3) proportion of horizo ntal, vertical, and oblique eye movements. RESULTS: There were signifi cant differences in the eye movement directions between breech and cep halic fetuses: horizontal (median 70.3% vs 80.2%), vertical (17.4% vs 11.0%), and oblique (13.1% vs 9.1%), respectively. No differences were noted in the duration of eye-movement and no-eye-movement periods or in the frequency of eye movements. CONCLUSION: Eye movement patterns, in direction, of term fetuses persisting in breech presentation run on a different in-utero developmental course of neural control from thos e in cephalic fetuses.