Obstetricians Rethink Fetal Heart Rate Monitoring

Fetal monitoring is a way to listen to your baby in labor. There are a couple of types of monitoring that are mainly used, including external fetal monitoring and internal fetal monitoring. The new guidelines still include the lesser known, but less likely to be incorrect or misinterpreted, auscultation with a Doppler/fetoscope. The reason for the changes is to clarify the language used and to help make sure that when looking at a fetal monitoring strip, physicians and nurses in the labor and delivery floors come up with similar answers.

Right now fetal monitoring in labor is not proving to be the huge benefit it was originally designed to be. The original thought was that it would reduce the rates of cerebral palsy. The false positive rate in trying to predict cerebral palsy was 99%, meaning it rarely did what it was originally supposed to do. One case they cite has four obstetricians looking at 50 sets of fetal heart rates from labors. The doctors agreed on the course of action only 22% of the time. All of this has lead to an increase in obstetrical intervention in childbirth, including the cesarean section. This difference in opinion and practice is one of the many reasons that it is very important that you pick your practitioner with care.

Related:

• External Fetal Monitoring
• Internal Fetal Monitoring
• Obstetrical Interventions
• Cesarean Section
• Feeling Your Baby Move
• Fetal Kick Counts
• How Your Baby Grows

_Source:

_{Practice Bulletin #106, "Intrapartum Fetal Heart Rate Monitoring: Nomenclature, Interpretation, and General Management Principles," is published in the July 2009 issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.}