King College's researchers have developed an app to predict a risk of premature/preterm birth. The app has been tested in two studies in a high risk pregnancy at antenatal clinics.
In official press release, the King's College announced the app called QUIPP that could help doctors to better identify women at risk of giving birth prematurely.
Researchers have found two major factors to determine a risk a pregnant woman face to tove a premature birth. They are the length of cervix and levels of a biomarker found in vaginal fluid known as fetal fibronectin.
Fetal fibronectin are typically tested from 23 weeks of pregnancy. Team King College in have also further developed the model of fetal fibronectin test to accurately test from the first half of pregnancy.
According to News Medical, the model was developed and validated on 625 pregnant women consecutively. QUIPP was used to calculate the estimated probability of delivery and analyzed it as a predictive test for the actual occurrence of each event.
King's College researches uses specialized algorithm that combine calculation of two factors in their app. Two studies have conducted to test the app, the first one focused on women with high risk of preterm birth. While the second study was to predict the likelihood of early delivery in a group of women showing symptoms of early labour which often doesn't progress to real labour.
Gizmag reported that those two studies have been published in the Ultrasound Obstetrics & Gynecology journal.
Professor Andrew Shennan from Obstetrics at King's College London and a consultant obstetrician at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust is the one who lead both studies. In regard to the studies he said, "Despite advances in prenatal care the rate of preterm birth has never been higher in recent years, including in the US and UK, so doctors need reliable ways of predicting whether a woman is at risk of giving birth early. It can be difficult to accurately assess a woman's risk, given that many women who show symptoms of preterm labour do not go on to deliver early.
"The more accurately we can predict her risk, the better we can manage a woman's pregnancy to ensure the safest possible birth for her and her baby, only intervening when necessary to admit these 'higher risk' women to hospital, prescribe steroids or offer other treatments to try to prevent an early birth," he added.
QUIPP is now available at Apple's App Store. The app will be helpful for helping doctors do a much better prediction of the risk of preterm birth.
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