TPAL System Obstetric History Calculator
The TPAL system obstetric history calculator calculates the obstetric history of a woman in terms of the number of term births she has had, the number of premature births she has had, the number of abortions she has had, and the number of living children she currently has. Based on this, the calculator formulates the obstetric history in a "TPAL" format, where T is the number of term births, P is the number of premature births, A is the number of abortions, and L is the number of current living children.
Term births is the number of times the woman has given birth to babies after 37 weeks of gestation. Thus, for example, if a woman gave birth at 38 weeks of gestation, this is considered a term birth.
Premature births is the number of times the woman has given birth to babies before 37 weeks of gestation. Thus, for example, if a woman gave birth at 36 weeks of gestation, this is considered a premature birth.
Both for term and premature births, multiple gestation is considered as 1 birth. Thus, if a woman has twins or triplets in a term or premature birth, it is just considered 1 birth (not multiple).
The abortions is the number of pregnancies that have been terminated (induced abortion) or the number of pregnancies in which the fetus dies in utero before 20 weeks into the pregnancy. If the fetus dies after 20 weeks into the pregnancy, it is considered a stillbirth. If a woman has been pregnant twice and had a live birth in one pregnancy and an abortion in another, she would have an obstetric history of G2P1A1.
Living children refers to children who are currently living. This is where multiple gestation births matter. If a woman has given birth only once and it was to term triplets who are all still alive, this would be considered as T1 P0 A0 .
To use this calculator, a user simply enters in the number of term births a woman has had, the number of premature births she has had, the number of abortions she has had, and the number of living children she currently has, and clicks the 'Calculate' button. The obstetric history will then be automatically calculated and displayed.
An obstetric history serves as a history of a woman's past pregnancies and their outcomes. They can be used to guide a practitoner's monitoring of a woman's current or future pregnancies.
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