OBJECTIVES To determine the value of clinical foetal distress in predicting early perinatal outcome. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING Kenyatta National Hospital. SUBJECTS Fifty eight newborns delivered via Caesarian section with a diagnosis of clinical foetal distress were compared with another group of 58 newborns delivered similarly, but without clinical foetal distress. RESUL...

OBJECTIVE A history of foetal death is a risk factor for complications and foetal death in subsequent pregnancies as most previous risk factors remain present and an underlying cause of death may recur. The purpose of this study was to evaluate subsequent pregnancy outcome after foetal death and to compare cases of recurrent foetal death. STUDY DESIGN A retrospective cohort study in a tertiar...

For many years intermittent recording of the foetal heart rate with a stethoscope and the detection of meconium in the liquor have been the only signs used for diagnosing intrapartum foetal asphyxia. Although the system has the virtue of simplicity, the unexpected disappearance of foetal heart sound when the foetal heart rate was being recorded as normal, or the frequent delivery of a vigorous ...

• The vessels of the unexpanded foetal lung react more strongly to certain stimuli than those of the expanded foetal or newborn lung; they probably react more strongly than the vessels of adult lungs. Thus acetylcholine and histamine caused profound vasodilatation in unexpanded foetal lungs and comparatively weak dilatation in expanded foetal lungs. Noradrenaline caused a high degree of vasocon...

Foetal movements commence at seven weeks of gestation, with the foetal movement repertoire including twitches, whole body movements, stretches, isolated limb movements, breathing movements, head and neck movements, jaw movements (including yawning, sucking and swallowing) and hiccups by ten weeks of gestational age. There are two key biomechanical aspects to gross foetal movements; the first be...

Cell therapy for nucleus pulposus (NP) regeneration is an attractive treatment for early disc degeneration as shown by studies using autologous NP cells or stem cells. Another potential source of cells is foetal cells. We investigated the feasibility of isolating foetal cells from human foetal spine tissues and assessed their chondrogenic potential in alginate bead cultures. Histology and immun...

The high oxygen affinity of foetal versus adult blood is an almost universal characteristic of viviparous vertebrates; a notable exception is the cat (Novy & Parer, 1969). There is also likely to be a difference in the oxygen affinities of foetal and adult blood in the teleostean fish, the seaperch Embiotoca lateralis Agassiz. Our studies of E. lateralis foetal and adult haemoglobins and erythr...

activities of the key enzymes of gluconeogenesis in the liver and kidney of the foetal guinea pig have been followed. The foetal guinea pigs used had a gestational age of 68-72 days. Pyruvate carboxylase was present at very low activities in the kidney of the foetus and neonatal animal and also in the foetal liver until day 50, when it increased in activity to reach a value by day 60 of more th...

Naturally acquired immunity to malaria requires repeat infections yet does not engender sterile immunity or long-lasting protective immunologic memory. This renders infants and young children the most susceptible to malaria-induced morbidity and mortality, and the ultimate target for a malaria vaccine. The prevailing paradigm is that infants initially garner protection due to transplacentally t...