A Consilience of Inductions Supports the Extended Fetuses‐at‐Risk Model

Yudkin et al.’ fetuses-at-risk (FAR) approach1 for estimating gestational age-specific stillbirth rates languished for years before being widely accepted. More recently, this formulation has been extended to pregnancy-related postnatal events, with proponents claiming that the incidence of birth, growth restriction and perinatal death are key phenomena in perinatology.2 However, epidemiologists have been reluctant to debate and develop these concepts, leaving clinicians to pursue applications without adequate epidemiologic input.3 I was therefore pleasantly surprised when Professor Cande Ananth invited commentaries on a manuscript criticising the extended FAR model. Hopefully, such discussion will help the perinatal community to accept or reject the extended FAR approach with greater immediacy than was shown to Yudkin et al.'s original proposition.