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Concept
Gestational age
Summary
In obstetrics, gestational age is a measure of the age of a pregnancy taken from the beginning of the woman's last menstrual period (LMP), or the corresponding age of the gestation as estimated by a more accurate method if available. Such methods include adding 14 days to a known duration since fertilization (as is possible in in vitro fertilization), or by obstetric ultrasonography. The popularity of using this measure of pregnancy is due to the fact that menstrual periods are usually noticed, while there is generally no convenient way to discern when fertilization or implantation occurred. Gestational age is contrasted with fertilization age which takes the date of fertilization as the start date of gestation, and pregnancy which begins with implantation.
The definition of pregnancy and the calculation of gestational are relevant in the context of the abortion debate and the beginning of human personhood.
According to American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the main methods to calculate gestational age are:
Directly calculating the days since the beginning of the last menstrual period
Early obstetric ultrasound, comparing the size of an embryo or fetus to that of a reference group of pregnancies of known gestational age (such as calculated from last menstrual periods) and using the mean gestational age of other embryos or fetuses of the same size. If the gestational age as calculated from an early ultrasound is contradictory to the one calculated directly from the last menstrual period, it is still the one from the early ultrasound that is used for the rest of the pregnancy.
In case of in vitro fertilization, calculating days since oocyte retrieval or co-incubation and adding 14 days.
Gestational age can also be estimated by calculating days from ovulation if it was estimated from related signs or ovulation tests, and adding 14 days by convention.
Official source
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