BODY PROPORTIONS AND EARLY NEONATAL MORBIDITY IN SMALL-FOR-GESTATIONAL-AGE INFANTS OF SUCCESSIVE BIRTHS

Background. We wanted to examine if infants who were small for gestati onal age (SGA) at term had increased perinatal mortality or morbidity compared to non-SGA infants, and if this could be related to the infan t's body proportions, or to whether the mother previously had delivere d a low-birthweight infant (''repeater'') or not (''non-repeater''). M ethods. From a cohort of 5722 para 1 and para 2 women, we compared per inatal mortality in 541 SGA (birthweight <10th percentile) and 4737 no n-SGA infants. From the same cohort, early neonatal morbidity was stud ied in 368 SGA and 462 control infants without congenital malformation s, Results. SGA infants had a 6.4 (95% CI: 2.6-15.7) higher risk of pe rinatal death than controls, but when infants who died with congenital malformations were excluded, this risk was not significantly increase d. SGA infants were more often transferred to an intensive care unit t han controls (1.7, 95% CI: 1.0-2.9). Among SGA births, infants with as ymmetric body proportions (i.e. low ponderal index) more often had sym ptoms in the neonatal period (RR: 2.5; 95% CI: 1.4-4.3) and were more often transferred to an intensive care unit (3.4; 95% CI: 1.6-7.4) tha n symmetric SGA infants, whereas there were no differences between SGA infants of repeaters and non-repeaters. Conclusions. We found that SG A infants had higher perinatal mortality than controls, but this was d ue to a higher prevalence of congenital malformations. Among SGA infan ts without malformations, our results indicated increased neonatal mor bidity in infants with asymmetric body proportions.