As part of the medical studies at the University of Lausanne, students are asked to achieve a
personal research project and write a master thesis in addition to other exams in order to
achieve a medical degree. As I have always been attracted to obstetrics, it became obvious
that I would ask to perform this research project in this field.
This master thesis has taken place at the Klinik für Geburtshilfe, at the Universitätsspital in
Zürich (USZ) from March 2017 to April 2018 and aims at assessing the accuracy of fetal and
newborn HCs measurements, combined with it’s relation to delivery.
It has always been considered obvious that the larger the head of the fetus, the higher risk of
delivery difficulties. This relationship seems, however, nowadays still quite imprecise. The
objective of the current Master thesis is therefore to provide, in a first part, an overview of the
history up to today's aspects of childbirth and the methods used over time to assess the fetal
head circumference (HC). This first part aims for a better understanding of the second part
and does not provide a complete overview of the obstetric history. In the second part, the
design and initial results of a prospective study are presented. In this study, the accuracy of
the post-birth HC measurement will be verified by measuring inter-observer variability, the
accuracy of the pre-birth HC's ultrasonographic assessment will be verified by comparing the
data with those obtained immediately, as well as two days after birth.