Assessment of Gestational Age (Nursing)

00:01 Now that we know what to anticipate on a normal newborn assessment, it's time to talk about what the nurse needs to know for newborn complications.

00:12 Before we begin our discussion of those complications, I want to review a few terms: LGA, which stands for large for gestational age; AGA, which stands for average for gestational age; and SGA, which stands for small for gestational age.

00:28 So when we think about the normal weight for a newborn, somewhere between 2700 grams, and 4000 grams, there's a wide range there.

00:37 Babies who are in the greater than 90th percentile, if we were to graph that out, are considered LGA or large for gestational age.

00:45 Babies that are between the 10th and 90th percentile huge range there are considered average for gestational age, and babies that are in the less than 10th percentile of that normal graph are considered small for gestational age.

01:00 It's important to remember that LGA, AGA, and SGA are terms that are different than being term, preterm, and post-term.

01:09 Now, I want you to look at this particular graph, which looks a little similar to the graph we just looked at.

01:14 But this is the graph that is collected on babies after they're born.

01:18 So this looks at the length and the weight.

01:21 And it still uses that same percentile of 90th, 10 to 90th, and less than 10th percentile.

01:29 So this is just another graph, but we can use the same terminology in order to interpret the results.