DESIGN OF A WEIGHT-GAIN CHART FOR PREGNAN T-WOMEN

Background: A low weight for height of pregnant women at the start of pregnancy and a low weight gain during pregnancy has a negative impact of fetal growth. Aim: To report the design of a weight gain chart for pregnant women that allows to classify mothers according to their nut ritional status and to monitor weight gain during gestation. Material and methods: Data from 1745 Chilean mothers who delivered their newbor ns in 1983 and 1984 were used to build this chart. Results: The instru ment could diagnose, from gestational week 10 onwards, mothers at risk of delivering babies with birth weight under 3000 g and set weight ga in goals for each individual mother based on here nutritional status. Similarly, mothers at risk of delivering babies with birth weight over 3999 g could be early diagnosed during pregnancy and guided to have a prudent weight gain. Conclusions: The chart can be easily used in pre natal clinics of developing countries and its currently applied in sev eral Latin American countries.