Skripsi

Corelation between placental HCG concentration and birth weight.

One hormone that plays essential roles in human pregnancy is Human Chorionic Gonadotrophin (hCG). hCG prevents the disintegration of corpus luteum and maintains progesterone production that is critical for maintenance of placental function. The focus of this study is about the influence of hCG towards pregnancy outcome, specifically birth weight. The objective of this study is to search for any correlation between placental hCG concentration and birth weight. The research design used is cross sectional study with secondary data obtained from medical records of pregnant women at Rumah Sakit Budi Kemuliaan. The data collected contained placental hCG concentration, newborn’s birth weight, and gestational age. The period of data collection is from October 2007 to March 2008. Result of the study showed that strong correlation present between placental hCG concentration and birth weight with correlation coefficient -0.725 and the coefficient of determination value 0.526. Negative value of correlation coefficient means when there is a high hCG concentration, the birth weight is low, vice versa. Critical analysis concluded that this correlation is affected by gestational age, and this could be explained theoretically. Future studies need to be conducted with more sufficient number of sample size.
Keywords: placental hCG concentration, birth weight, correlation, gestational age.