Association of Postnatal Anterior Facial Geometric Morphometry with Cephalopelvic Disproportion among Neonates in Jigawa State, Nigeria

Cephalopelvic disproportion (CPD) is a major cause of obstructed labor and operative delivery worldwide,  contributing to maternal and neonatal morbidity and mortality in low- and middle-income countries. Traditional  antenatal prediction of CPD relies on linear fetal anthropometric measurements, which primarily reflect fetal size  rather than structural configuration and have limited predictive accuracy. This study associated postnatal anterior  facial geometric morphometry of neonates with CPD. A total of 160 neonates (80 CPD, 80 non-CPD) were  prospectively recruited from Jahun General Hospital, Jigawa State, Nigeria. Anterior facial images were captured  at a standardized distance of approximately 1 meter with subjects positioned in the Frankfurt horizontal plane,  and 15 landmarks were digitized using tpsDig2 software. Generalized Procrustes analysis, principal component  analysis, canonical variate analysis, and Procrustes ANOVA were performed to examine shape differences and  test their significance between groups. Principal component analysis showed that the first three components  accounted for 69.73% of total facial shape variation, with clear separation between groups. Canonical variate  analysis revealed a Mahalanobis distance of 1.0346 and a Procrustes distance of 0.0326 between groups, both  statistically significant on permutation testing (1000 rounds, P < 0.001). Procrustes ANOVA showed significant  effects of group on centroid size (F = 11.85, P = 0.0008) and on facial shape (F = 4.44, P < 0.0001). Anterior  facial shape and size differed significantly between CPD and non-CPD neonates, suggesting that anterior facial  geometric morphometry was associated with CPD.

Key Words: cephalopelvic disproportion; geometric morphometrics; anteri