Corticosteroids Administration for Enhancement of Fetal Lung Maturity and its Effects on Doppler Indices

Abstract
Background: Evaluation the effects of maternal corticos-teroids administration on Doppler indices (RI, PI & S/D ratio) of umblical artery, fetal middle cerebral artery and fetal pulmonary trunk in third trimester and its correlation with pregnancy outcome.
Methods: One hundred and fourty (140) women were included in this study, and were divided in two groups, seventy (70) subjects as study group have a risk for preterm labour and seventy (70) subjects as control group with no risk of preterm labour, study group subjects received course of corticosteroids in third trimester. The Doppler examination of the Pulsatility Index (PI), Resistive Index (RI) and Systolic diastolic Ratio (S/D) of the Umbilical Artery (UA), the Middle Cerebral Artery (MCA) and Fetal Pulmonary Trunk (PT) were measured and comparison between values of both groups were done after zero, one, three and five weeks of corticos-teroids administration of study group and same gestational age of control group.
Results: No significant change was observed in the mean values of the pulsatility, resistive indices and systolic-diastolic ratios of both groups in umbilical artery, fetal middle cerebral artery and fetal pulmonary trunk after one week after corti-costeroids administration.
Conclusions: We demonstrated that dexamethasone ad-ministration did not cause changes in Doppler values and fetal biophysical profile scores after one week of its use.