Symphysis-fundus height measurement to predict small-for-gestational-age status at birth: a systematic review

BACKGROUND: Fetal growth restriction is among the most common and complex problems in modern obstetrics. Symphysis-fundus (SF) height measurement is a non-invasive test that may help determine which women are at risk. This study is a systematic review of the literature on the accuracy of SF height measurement for the prediction of small-for-gestational-age (SGA) status at birth in unselected and low-risk pregnancies. METHODS: The Medline, Embase, Cinahl, SweMed, and Cochrane Library databases were searched with no limitation on publication date (through September 2014), which returned 722 citations. Two reviewers then developed a short list of 51 publications of possible relevance and assessed them using the following inclusion criteria: cohort study of test accuracy performed in a routine prenatal care setting; SF height measurement for all participants; classification of SGA, defined as birth weight (BW) < 10th, 5th, or 3rd percentile or ≥ one or two standard deviations below the mean; study conducted in Northern, Western, or Central Europe; USA; Canada; Australia; or New Zealand; and sufficient data for 2 × 2 table construction. Quality of the included studies was assessed in duplicate using criteria suggested by the Cochrane Collaboration. Review Manager 5.3 software was used to analyze the data, including plotting of summary receiver operating curve spaces. RESULTS: Eight studies were included in the final dataset and seven were included in summary analyses. The sensitivity of SF height measurement for SGA (BW < 10(th) percentile) prediction ranged from 0.27 to 0.76 and specificity ranged from 0.79 to 0.92. Positive and negative likelihood ratios ranged from 1.91 to 9.09 and from 0.29 to 0.83, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: SF height can serve as a clinical indicator along with other clinical findings, information about medical conditions, and previous obstetric history. However, SF height has high false-negative rates for SGA. Clinicians must understand the limitations of this test. The protocol has been registered in the international prospective register of systematic reviews, PROSPERO (Registration No. CRD42014008928, http://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/display_record.asp?ID=CRD42014008928). ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12884-015-0461-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.