Deceleration area of fetal heart rate trace and fetal acidemia at delivery: A case–control study

Abstract

Objective. To assess the correlation between the total deceleration area of the fetal heart rate (FHR) pre-delivery trace and intrapartum fetal acid–base status in a low risk population.

Study design. We analyzed the electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) traces of 26 pregnancies with fetuses presenting acidemia at delivery and those of thirty controls. All laboring patients had at least 1 hour of EFM without interruption. The deceleration area was calculated, after digital analysis, with Autocad System 2004.

Results. We found that the number of decelerations (8.03 ± 3.77 vs. 4.64 ± 3.84) and the total deceleration area/hour (35.56 ± 11.87 vs. 17.81 ± 9.38) were significantly higher in the study group than in the control group.

Conclusions. Our results show that quantitative analysis of the deceleration areas by digitized cardiotocography may have a discriminative capacity to predict fetal acidemia at delivery.

Keywords:

• Pregnancy
• second stage
• deceleration
• FHR
• acidemia