[Newborn's postnatal maturity index as the health marker of the mother].

OBJECTIVES: Newborns of both high and low body weight, as well as of higher or lower gestational age and length are born within the wide range of the six weeks of the biological norm. The correlation between the fetal mass and height is high, however the correlation of those two basic features with the fetal maturity is half as high. In view of the above, in order to verify the proper time of pregnancy ending, particularly if it is an instrumental one, it is necessary to assess the newborn's maturity index, which is also an indicator of the mother's health. Consequently, the index has a prognostic value for assessment of both the mother's and the infant's morbidity. MATERIALS END METHODS: Human maturation process was evaluated by means of at least two ultrasonographic measurements of fetal parameters < or = 28th week to determine an individual birth term in 2500 cases, construed as the day when the fetus reaches full maturity to self-dependent life and the mother becomes ready for the labor. Regardless of the method of assessment, the most important criterion of the sufficient pregnancy duration is the degree of the fetal maturity assessed immediately after the labor, i.e. Klimek's score (K) during the routine neonatal evaluation accompanied by the assessment of the newborn infant's adaptive efficiency expressed in the popular Apgar score (A). RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: It was found that the point count in K score is a more sensitive index of the newborn infant's wellbeing than the A score. Fetal development in the mother's womb progresses according to the auxological laws, to which the K score point-count conforms, unlike the A score. This study summarizes the latest studies on this subject in infants born both from physiological and pathological labors.