title: [Frequency distribution of birth weight and gestational age in Taiwan].
abstract: Perinatal mortality rate is closely related to birth weight. We collected data on 35919 single liveborn babies at a teaching hospital in central Taiwan between 1977 and 1987, excluding 1980. The average birth weights of the two sexes combined, and of male and female live births separately, were 3163 +/- 486 gm, 3211 +/- 499 gm (N = 18865) and 3110 +/- 466 gm (N = 17054), respectively. The average gestational age of these live births was 39.7 +/- 2.1 weeks. The skewness and kurtosis of birth weight and gestational age distribution were -0.86 and 3.13, and -2.11 and 10.29, respectively. The two distributions indicated high kurtosis and left skewness, and were approximately normally distributed. Because birth weight and gestational age are highly associated, the skew-to-left residual distribution of birth weight might have been induced by low gestational age. Babies of low gestational age might not be able to develop mature organs and tissues, which, thus, results in high perinatal mortality. The distribution of birth weight intersects the normal curve within the region between 1500 gm and 2000 gm, which means that we may divide it into a predominant part and a residual part. Many articles have shown that the residual part is highly correlated to perinatal mortality rate and deserves further analysis. The average birth weight with gestational age at 40 weeks was 3239 +/- 385 gm, skewness and kurtosis were 0.16 and 0.75, respectively. The birth-weight distribution for a given number of gestational weeks is closer to the normal distribution. This paper provides standard figures and tables of birth weight with specific gestational age as a norm for related medical research.
authors.affiliation: Graduate Institute of Medicine, School of Public Health, Kaohsiung Medical College, Taiwan, Republic of China.
authors.forename: Y Y
authors.initials: YY
authors.lastname: Yen
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Lan
authors.forename: C T
authors.initials: CT
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: C Y
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: S F
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Hsieh
authors.forename: Y C
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Ko
mesh_terms: D001724:Birth Weight; D005260:Female; D005865:Gestational Age; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D012737:Sex Factors; D013624:Taiwan