• Jillian McKoy

    Senior Writer and Editor

    Jillian McKoy is the senior writer and editor at the School of Public Health. Profile

Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

There is 1 comment on Average Pregnancy Length in the US Is Shorter than in European Countries

  1. One question I have about the average duration of pregnancy is whether the methodology for the three countries to measure gestational age was the same. My guess is that it probably is not, and one would not expect it to be so automatically. My question comes because GA estimation based on last menstrual period tends to overestimate GA compared with data using ultrasound. If the US was increasing its use of ultrasound dating during this period, then we could be looking at an artifact of the method rather than a true difference. The alternative is that it would be explained by biological factors. For example, is there, on average, a higher rate of maternal risk factors that might shorten pregnancy duration in the US, compared with the UK and the NL? I’d be curious how the authors respond.

Post a comment.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *