Human Pelvis Height is Associated with other Pelvis Measurements of Obstetric Value

Abstract

In low resource settings, perinatal death remains a major challenge, yet some of the key anthropometric measures used for screening have been found to be inappropriate. These calls for additional anatomically related measurements to act as a basis for the design of: easy-to-use, low technology accurate tools to enhance obstetric care quality in these settings. This study set out to determine the associations between the various pelvis anthropometric measurements of obstetric importance with pelvis height. The study made use of 30 complete rearticulated Adult pelvic bonesets of known sex. The some of the thirteen measurements made on each boneset included: Pelvis height, Sacral Anterior Orientation (SAO), pubic bone length, total pelvis height and inlet medial-lateral diameter. All measurements were taken thrice and the average used for comparisons with pelvis height. The non-parametric Mann-Whitney test and multilevel regression analysis test to control for gender was used. Pelvis height had significant associations with SAO (-0.36, P<0.01), pubic bone length (0.41, P<0.01), total pelvis height (0.21, P=0.04) and inlet medial-lateral diameter (0.46, P=0.02). Additional significant associations were observed with the diameters of the mid and outlet diameters of the birth canal. Pelvis height had significant associations with: total pelvis height and inlet medial-lateral diameter of the pelvis and the measurements related to the mid and outlet diameters of the birth canal. This study provides initial evidence to support further evaluation of pelvis height as an additional tool for the assessment of the human birth canal.