The impact of betamethasone on fetal pulmonary, umbilical and middle cerebral artery Doppler velocimetry and its relationship with neonatal respiratory distress syndrome

Table 5 Results of pulmonary artery Doppler indices at different gestational ages at the beginning of the study in all participants

Parameter	Group1 ^a N = 28	Group 2 ^b N = 37	Group 3 ^c N = 37	P-value
Number	28	37	37
Pulmonary artery pulsatility index (PI)	2.113 ± 0.192	2.196 ± 0.124	2.070 ± 0.143	0.18
Pulmonary artery resistance index (RI)	0.823 ± 0.041	0.793 ± 0.035	0.831 ± 0.042	0.27
Pulmonary artery acceleration time (AT) (ms)	0.046 ± 0.010*	0.056 ± 0.012*	0.065 ± 0.015*	< 0.001
Pulmonary ejection time (ET) (ms)	0.257 ± 0.041	0.270 ± 0.048	0.268 ± 0.042	0.65
Pulmonary AT/ET	0.180 ± 0.023*	0.210 ± 0.018*	0.247 ± 0.042*	< 0.001

*post hoc analysis resulted in two by two difference between groups (p-value< 0.001)
^aGestational age ≥ 28 weeks and < 30 weeks
^bGestational age ≥ 30 weeks and < 32 weeks
^cGestational age ≥ 32 weeks and < 34 weeks

ISSN: 1471-2393