Epidemiology
1. Accounts for 10% of Intrauterine Growth Retardation
2. Usually occurs in early gestation
Pathophysiology
1. Intrauterine Growth Retardation
2. Affects both Head and body growth
3. Associated with serious neurologic sequelae
Specific Etiologies
1. Severe maternal malnutrition
2. Maternal Anemia
3. Multiple Gestation
4. Phenylketonuria (mother or child)
5. Uncontrolled severe Asthma
  1. Bracken (2003) Obstet Gynecol 102:739
6. Chromosomal abnormality
  1. Trisomy 13
  2. Trisomy 18
  3. Trisomy 21
7. Congenital malformation
  1. Dwarf syndromes
8. Early infection
  1. TORCH Virus infection
  2. Listeria
  3. Syphilis
  4. Tuberculosis
9. Teratogen Exposure
  1. Maternal Tobacco abuse
  2. Illicit Drug abuse (heroin, Methadone)
  3. Phenytoin (Dilantin)
  4. Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
    1. No amount of Alcohol is safe!

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This page was written by Scott Moses, MD. This page was last revised before 5/10/08, prior to consistent tracking of revision date. This page was last published on 2/26/2010. Please send comments and questions to the editor. Contact information may be found on the page About the Family Practice Notebook. These pages are best viewed with Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0.