OBJECTIVE To find whether low-to-high frequency (LF/HF) ratio of fetal heart rate (FHR) variability changes in relation to a significant ST-event during delivery, and if the change is predictive of metabolic acidosis of the newborn. DESIGN A case-control study. SETTING Data from a multicentre project. SUBJECTS Acidotic and control fetuses with abnormal cardiotocography together with a ST-...

Since its inception, many have questioned the utility of electronic fetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring. However, it arrived without the benefit of clear, standard nomenclature, leading to difficulty interpreting studies regarding its benefit. In 2008, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) developed standard nomenclature for interpreting eFHR tracings. Understanding...

BACKGROUND Intermittent fetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring during labor using an acoustic stethoscope is the most frequent method for fetal assessment of well-being in low- and middle-income countries. Evidence concerning reliability and efficacy of this technique is almost nonexistent. OBJECTIVES To determine the value of routine intermittent FHR monitoring during labor in the detection of FH...

This study examined the hypothesis that repeated episodes of brief but severe hypoxia would not attenuate the chemoreflex-mediated rapid initial fall in fetal heart rate (FHR) and, further, that greater hypoxic stress, as shown by hypotension and metabolic acidosis, would be associated with an enhanced chemoreflex response. Chronically instrumented, near-term fetal sheep received 1 min total um...

Objectives. Umbilical cord blood analysis for assessment of the newborn’s acid-base status soon after birth is the most objective way of evaluating the fetal metabolic condition at delivery. We researched the effects of maternal age, multiple gestation, fetal heart rate, gestational age, parity, delivery mode and total duration of labor on fetal well-being as assessed by umbilical cord blood ga...

Monitoring the fetal heart rate (FHR) throughout pregnancy empowers the clinician to diagnose fetal well being, characterize fetal development and detect abnormality (Freeman et al. 2003). A non-invasive and low cost system would enable monitoring of normal pregnancies and promote large population studies of fetal physiological development (Freeman et al. 2003). FHR monitoring is an ongoing obs...

Fetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring is currently the primary methodology for antenatal determination of fetal well-being. Currently, the FHR can be detected with ultrasonography, but the additional information from fetal electrocardiogram (FECG) is only available via an invasive scalp electrode. A cost effective noninvasive monitoring through standard ECG electrodes could be used on nearly every ...

This research work compares the classification results of Fetal Heart Rate signal using three different feature sets. The Discrete Wavelet Transform is employed to extract three different sets consisted of scale and time-scale dependent features from the Fetal Heart Rate signal. The three sets of features are classified using the method of Support Vector Machines (SVM) with RBF kernels. The exp...

Doctoral thesis statement for obtaining the academic title of " Doctor " , Resume 23 Shrnutí 24 1 1 Problem introduction Fetal heart activity is the prominent source of information about the fetal well being during delivery. Cardiotocography (CTG) – recording of fetal heart rate (fHR) and uterine contractions (TOCO) enables obstetricians to detect possible ongoing fetal hypoxia, which may occur...

Severe fetal acidemia during labour can result in life-lasting neurological deficits, but the timely detection of this condition is often not possible. This is because the positive predictive value (PPV) of fetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring, the mainstay of fetal health surveillance during labour, to detect concerning fetal acidemia is around 50%. In fetal sheep model of human labour, we report...