Measuring newborn foot length to identify small babies in need of extra care: a cross sectional hospital based study with community follow-up in Tanzania

Table 1 Characteristics of newborns measured on the first day only and for the sub-sample of babies also measured on the fifth day

	All babies N = 529		First day only N = 346		First and fifth day N = 183		χ^{2 4} p-value
Gender	n	%	n	%	n	%
Male	283	52	188	54	95	52
Female	246	48	158	46	88	48	0.5
Birth weight¹
Very LBW (<1500 g)	8	2	7	2	1	0.5	0.1
LBW (<2500 g)	78	15	55	16	23	12	0.2
Foot length²
Very short feet (<7 cm)	14	3	12	3	2	1	0.1
Short feet (<8 cm)	275	52	178	51	97	53	0.7
Gestation weeks³
Premature (<37 weeks)	44	8	30	9	14	8	0.6

¹Birth weight measured within 24 hours using digital Salter scales. Mean birth weight for all babies was 2922 grams (95% confidence interval 2880-2964).
²Foot length measured within 24 hours of birth using a hard ruler. Mean foot length for all babies was 7.8 cm (95% confidence interval 7.8-7.9)
³Gestation age in weeks estimated using the Eregie method [18].
⁴ χ² test to look for evidence of difference between the first day only and the first and fifth day subset of newborns.

ISSN: 1471-2458