Morphological Variation Of The Umbilical Cord and Its Clinical Significance Among Mothers Delivered at Korem General Hospital, Southern Tigray, Ethiopia: Institution-Based Descriptive CrossSectional Study

Abstract

The umbilical cord is the vital connection between the fetus and the placenta. The umbilical cord plays a vital role in fetal development, supplying oxygen and nutrients from the placenta to the fetus. Different literatures show umbilical cord has morphological variations and it has an impact on birth outcome, despite it is not studied yet in our area which is the reason for the need of the study. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to investigate the morphological variation of the umbilical cord in terms of length, number of vessels, coiling pattern and other abnormalities like cord knot and cord entanglements. METHODOLOGY: Descriptive study design was employed analyzing on 442 umbilical cords collected from Korem General hospital. The data was collected through direct observation and measurement . statistical measures such as mean, range, mode and standard deviation, and frequency distribution were used for analysis. RESULT: The findings reveal that the average length of the umbilical cord was 50 cm, with a range of 35 cm to 78 cm. Most umbilical cord (99.5%) exhibits three vessel patterns, while 0.5% showed variations such as four vessel patterns with no two-vessel pattern. Majority (69%) of the umbilical cords had normal coiling pattern and 17% and 14% were hypocoiled and hypercoiled respectively. Additionally, 88% (392) of the umbilical cord had not had any cord knot whereas the 8% (36) and 3.2% (14) had cord knots and true cord entanglement respectively. CONCLUSION: The study show umbilical cord varies morphologically in length, coiling vasculature, knot and entanglement and has an impact on birth outcome. So, it gives an input for clinical anatomy and embryology. In addition to this the medical students will benefit from this as it will help them in their medical intervention. Further research with a large sample size is recommended to explore the clinical significance of those variations.