Main description:

Care for Children Born Small for Gestational Age is a comprehensive handbook that serves to synthesize the extensive recent literature in the area to provide a practical resource aimed at a wide range of healthcare professionals, including obstetricians, midwives, neonatologists, and primary care physicians. This comprehensive handbook includes an in-depth survey of the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and long-term monitoring of children born small for gestational age, as well as related conditions such as intrauterine growth restriction, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes. Additionally, the short and long-term psychiatric and social consequences of this condition are addressed.

Contents:

Fetal Development.- Intrauterine aspects.- Maternal nutrition.- Prenatal care, surveillance, and risk assessment.- Birthweight percentiles: an international comparison.- Fetal growth restriction: definitions, causes, and epidemiology.- Obstetric aspects.- Placental function in intrauterine growth restriction.- Placental function: predicting impairment.- The role of genetic and epigenetics in growth restriction.- Fetal programming.- Premature infants.- Term newborns.- Endocrine regulation of fetal growth.- Growth hormone treatment.- Renal function.- Pancreatic development.- Metabolic syndrome.- Cardiovascular risks and diseases.- Ophthalmological findings and visual function disorders.- Auditory function disorders.- Neurological, neurocognitive and behavioural aspects.- Prevention and long term care.- Considerations for future research.