Measuring Fundal Height Chart

After 20 weeks of pregnancy fundal height often matches the number of weeks you ve been pregnant.

Measuring fundal height chart. Fundal height when expressed in centimeters roughly corresponds to gestational age in weeks between 16 and 36 weeks for a vertex fetus. It should match the fetus gestational age in weeks within 1 to 3 cm e g a pregnant woman s uterus at 22 weeks should measure 19 to 25 cm. For example if you re at 20 weeks your fundal height should be around 18 to 22 centimeters.

The measurement should also match your gestational period give or take two centimeters. These studies have suggested that the measurement of the symphysis fundal height is better than abdominal palpation alone in detecting sga fetuses with detection rates of up to 86. Fundal height measures the distance from your pubic bone to the top of your uterus in centimeters.

Fundal height or mcdonald s rule is a measure of the size of the uterus used to assess fetal growth and development during pregnancy it is measured from the top of the mother s uterus to the top of the mother s pubic symphysis. This measurement helps your provider estimate your baby s size growth rate and position during the second half of your pregnancy. As the pregnancy progresses the uterus expands in the abdomen with its top moving up by about 4 centimeters per month an equivalent of two finger widths.

That means if you re 29 weeks pregnant your fundal height will usually be about 29 centimeters. Bjog 2018 sought to assess the accuracy of routinely collected anthropometric measures in predicting gestational. The expectation is that after week 24 of pregnancy the fundal height for a normally growing baby will match the number of weeks of pregnancy plus or minus 2 centimeters.

However one randomised trial found the fundal height measurement to be unhelpful in the detection of low birth weight infants lindhard et al 1990 with a pick. The doctor will record your fundal height measurement in centimeters and enter it on your chart. A fundal height measurement is typically done to determine if a baby is small for its gestational age.

But there are many reasons why the measurement may be higher or lower than expected. As a rule of thumb your fundal height in centimeters should roughly equal the number of weeks you re pregnant. As a very general rule a woman s fundal height should be within 1 to 3 centimeters of the baby s gestational age in weeks.

After the 20th week and until the 36th week of pregnancy the fundal height measurement usually matches the number of weeks of pregnancy this means that for a woman at the 26th week of pregnancy the fundal height measurement should be. Fundal height is the distance from the pubic bone to the top of the uterus measured in centimeters. For example at 20 weeks your fundal height should be about 17 to 23 centimeters.

Fundal height is used to assess gestational age although reliability has been called in to question other anthropometric measurements may also be useful especially in low resource settings where ultrasound is not available for pregnancy dating pugh et al. The measurement is generally defined as the distance in centimeters from the pubic bone to the top of the uterus. After 24 weeks of pregnancy the fundal height in centimeters is roughly equivalent to the week of gestation.