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Gestational Weight Gain

The gestational weight gain standards (GWG) describe patterns of GWG among normal weight women that are compatible with desirable healthy pregnancy outcomes, which provide a basis to guide clinical recommendations on weight gain. The generated standards could be used to alert clinicians to deviations in weight, which should then initiate a series of questions to determine whether the changes are associated with complications related to pregnancy, medical conditions, or eating disorders.

Gestational age range: week 15 until week 40

Assessment time: 5 minutes 

Level of professional qualification of assessors: None

Publications

Systematic review of the methodological quality of studies aimed at creating gestational weight gain charts. Ohadike CO, Cheikh-Ismail L, Ohuma EO, Giuliani F, Bishop D, Kac G et al.  Adv Nutr 2016, 7(2):313-22. 

Gestational weight gain standards based on women enrolled in the Fetal Growth Longitudinal Study of the INTERGROWTH-21st Project: a prospective longitudinal cohort study. Cheikh Ismail L, Bishop DC, Pang R, Ohuma EO, Kac G, Abrams B et al. BMJ 2016, 352(i):555.

Tables & Graphs

The graphs and charts are available with centiles or Z-scores (Standard deviation).

Women with BMI between 18.50 and 24.99 kg/m2  (“Normal”)

Women with BMI between 25.00 and 29.99 kg/m2 (“Overweight”)

Under preparation

Calculators & Apps

The “International Gestational Weight Gain” Calculator is an Excel-based application. This calculator produces centiles and z-scores for gestational weight gain based on the INTERGROWTH-21st Standards. Centiles and z-scores of large datasets can also be calculated.