title: Clustering of maternal-fetal clinical conditions and outcomes and placental lesions.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To identify by an inductive statistical analysis mutually similar and clinically relevant clinicoplacental clusters.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty-nine maternofetal and 49 placental variables have been retrospectively analyzed in a 3382 case clinicoplacental database using a hierarchical agglomerative Ward dendrogram and multidimensional scaling.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The exploratory cluster analysis identified 9 clinicoplacental (macerated stillbirth, fetal growth restriction, placenta creta, acute fetal distress, uterine hypoxia, severe ascending infection, placental abruption, and mixed etiology [2 clusters]), 5 purely placental (regressive placental changes, excessive extravillous trophoblasts, placental hydrops, fetal thrombotic vasculopathy, stem obliterative endarteritis), and 1 purely clinical (fetal congenital malformations) statistically significant clusters/subclusters. The clusters of such variables like clinical umbilical cord compromise, preuterine and postuterine hypoxia, gross umbilical cord or gross chorionic disk abnormalities did not reveal statistically significant stability.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Although clinical usefulness of several well-established placental lesions has been confirmed, claims about high predictability of others have not.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Cincinnati School of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA.
authors.forename: Jerzy
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Stanek
authors.forename: Jacek
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Biesiada
mesh_terms: D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D010922:Placenta Diseases / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011247:Pregnancy; D011248:Pregnancy Complications / Q000175:diagnosis*; D011256:Pregnancy Outcome; D025341:Principal Component Analysis; D012189:Retrospective Studies