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Article: Gestational Age, Forensic Determination
- Article from:
- World of Forensic Science
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Gestational Age, Forensic Determination
Estimating gestational age when a fetus dies is a specialized task in forensic
medicine
. Techniques for determining the gestational age of fetal or perinatal (around the time of birth) remains are mainly aimed at calculating the time since conception, and at determining if a specific disease could be the cause of fetal loss. In some cases, the time of conception cannot be known with certainty, as calculations based on last normal menstrual period may lead to an error of as much as two weeks.
The World Health Organization has set the viability threshold at 20 weeks gestation. Fetal death is defined as the death of a product of conception (fetus) ...