Predicting spontaneous preterm birth

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7359.289

BMJ 2002;325:289-290 ( 10 August )

Editorials

Predicting spontaneous preterm birth

Fetal fibronectin and ultrasonography help to rule out labour, not rule it in

Papers p 301

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The literature on predicting spontaneous preterm delivery deals with two areas. The first is predicting preterm delivery inasymptomatic patients. This is the risk you tell a woman in midpregnancy when she asks you if she will deliver early. The secondconcerns symptomatic patients. These are women who report contractionsbetween 24 and 36 weeks of gestation. To separate the two in theliterature is difficult because both sets of data involve thesame terminology and tests. The reader must therefore be awareof the populations being studied. The predictive values for anytest are directly related to the incidence of the disease in thepopulation studied. Therefore, a test that is predictive in ahigher risk group may be of little use in the generalpopulation.

The initial attempts to predict preterm delivery in asymptomatic patients involved the use of risk factors in patients. Theseproduced the Creasy risk scoring . . . [Full text of this article]

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Accuracy of cervicovaginal fetal fibronectin test in predicting risk of spontaneous preterm birth: systematic review: Honest Honest, Lucas M Bachmann, Janesh K Gupta, Jos Kleijnen, and Khalid S Khan
BMJ 2002 325: 301. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]