Transabdominal recordings of fetal heart rate in extremely small fetuses

Abstract

Introduction: As part of the fetal assessment for the Safe Passage Study, we recorded raw data of the fetal ECG via five maternal abdominal wall electrodes from 20 weeks to 23 weeks 6 days’ gestation.

Materials: For this study were extracted and analyzed the FHR patterns from the stored raw data in 16 stillbirths where the fetus weighed less than 1000 g and where autopsy was performed.

Results: Birth weights ranged from 190 to 970 g. The proportion FHR signal loss ranged from 0.3% to 21.1%. In the smallest fetus the heart weighed 1.3 g, yet the FHR signal loss was only 0.9%.

Keywords:

• Extremely small fetus
• fetal heart rate patterns
• stillbirth
• transabdominal fECG

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the members of the Safe Passage Study for their dedicated work. The members of the PASS Network can be found at http://safepassagestudy.org. The authors also gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the study participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported in this publication was supported by National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants U01HD055154, U01HD045935, U01HD055155, U01HD045991 and U01AA016501 funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.