الفهرس 
Embryology of fetal stomachOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The stomach appears as an echo lucent organ on ultrasonography in the left upper quadrant of the fetal abdomen. Sonographic visualization of the fetal stomach is possible at 9 weeks of gestation, and measurements of stomach area are possible after 10 weeks of gestation. The characteristic anatomy of the stomach, may be identified at about 14 weeks of gestation.
Non-visualized, dilated or even a small fetal stomach can be associated with a variety of anomalies and poor fetal outcome so the fetal stomach serves as an indicator of the physiological and pathological condition of the digestive systems
The purpose of the study was to establish standardized reference values for fetal stomach size throughout normal pregnancy as demonstrated during routine antenatal ultrasonography.
The present study was carried out on 260 pregnant women with normal singleton pregnancy that came for routine antenatal ultrasonography on fetuses with no apparent external pathology or anomaly and aged 14–40 weeks of gestation. Any fetal abnormality especially esophageal atresia and duodenal atresia, multiple pregnancies, pregnant women who have medical or emergency obstetric complications were excluded from the study.
Antenatal ultrasound used for estimating fetal gestational age that was confirmed by first trimester crown-rump length measurement or assessment of head biometry (BPD and HC), abdominal circumference (AC) and femur length (FL) at second and third trimester. The present study found that the fetal gastric area (cm2) was significantly associated with gestational age.
Summary
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The present study found that the fetal gastric area was significantly correlated with different gastric diameters including transverse, longitudinal, anterior posterior, circumference and gastric volume. The current study found that the best regression model correlated with gastric area (cm2) with gestational age was expressed by a cubic polynomial regression formula. The percentiles ranges for fetal gastric area (cm2) on gestational age that established in the current study showed increased growth with gestational age. The findings demonstrated a significant increase of the diameter of stomach circumference (mm) with advancing gestation. The linear regression model was the best regression model correlate with stomach circumference (mm) with gestational age. The median (50th percentile) for stomach circumference on gestational age in the present study was 50.7cm and the 5th percentile was 19.115cm. The study showed that a significant correlation between the fetal gastric area with different abdominal diameters. The current study demonstrated that the best regression model correlated with fetal gastric area / abdominal area ratio on gestational age was expressed by a cubic polynomial regression formula. There were significant positive correlations between different ratios of gastric / abdominal measures. The current study gave the formulas needed to compute conditional reference intervals that are specific to a single serial measurement. It is
important to build a normal modelled reference interval chart for the average and maximum fetal stomach size between 14 and 40 weeks of gestation.