Ultrasonographic study of 793 foetuses: measurement of normal foetal kidney lengths in Bangladesh.

It is well known that, structurally, the people of Asia are shorter than Europeans. The size of different organs of the foetus may also vary accordingly. To assess this, 793 foetuses between 16 and 40 weeks' gestation were studied and 1175 kidneys were measured on ultrasonograms. Only normal pregnancies were included in the study. Our results show that, in the main, the mean length of foetal kidneys in the present study is either slightly higher or similar to that previously reported by many authors. In this study, the average kidney length at full term is 3.95 cm. An excellent correlation was seen between gestational age, biparietal diameter, femoral length and renal length measurement.