Fetal cardiac interventions for congenital heart diseases may alleviate heart dysfunction, prevent them evolving into hypoplastic left heart syndrome, achieve biventricular outcome and improve fetal survival. Candidates for clinical fetal cardiac interventions are now restricted to cases of critical aortic valve stenosis with evolving hypoplastic left heart syndrome, pulmonary atresia with an i...

The ontogeny of fetal autonomic, motoric, state, and interactive functioning was investigated longitudinally in a sample of 31 healthy fetuses from 20 weeks through term. Fetal heart rate and movement data were collected during 50 min of doppler-based fetal monitoring at 6 gestational ages. Measures of fetal heart rate and variability, activity level and vigor, behavioral state, and reactivity ...

OBJECTIVE Compare the accuracy and reliability of fetal heart rate identification from maternal abdominal fetal electrocardiogram signals (ECG) and Doppler ultrasound with a fetal scalp electrode. DESIGN Prospective open method equivalence study. SETTING Three urban teaching hospitals in the Northeast United States. SAMPLE 75 women with normal pregnancies in labor at >37 weeks of gestatio...

The enigmatic quality of the maternal-fetal relationship has been extolled throughout history with little empirical support. We apply time series analysis to data for 137 maternal-fetal pairs collected at 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, and 38 weeks gestation. Maternal heart rate and skin conductance data were digitized in tandem with fetal heart rate and motor activity. No temporal relations between fetal...

Heart is the first organ formed during organogenesis. The fetal heart undergoes several structural and functional modifications to form the four-chambered mammalian heart. The adult heart shows different adaptations during compensatory and decompensatory heart failure. However, one common adaptation in the pathological heart is fetal reprogramming, where the adult heart expresses several genes ...

Most fetal heart rate patterns can be interpreted accurately so that management decisions can be made correctly. How-ever, few fetal heart rate patterns are so ambiguous that the obstetricians cannot interpret them precisely. A 27-year-old woman at 38 weeks' gestation in her first pregnancy was admitted with heavy vaginal bleeding and decrease in fetal movements. Fetal status was indeterminate ...