Three things to stop saying about fetal monitoring
Terms like “happy,” “tired,” and “distressed”have no place in fetal monitoring discussions. Let’s use accurate language to describe fetal health, instead of emotional interpretations.
Archive for September 2025
Are all fetuses the same?
In the past two decades, standardized approaches to cardiotocography (CTG) interpretation have evolved. They don’t take into account that specific fetal heart rate patterns may vary by fetal sex and age. There is a need for individualised interpretation as standard guidelines may not account for all fetal characteristics, potentially leading to misinterpretation and harm.
Would you let ChatGPT interpret your CTG?
The paper assesses the performance of four Large Language Models for interpreting CTG traces of pregnant women. None of them were fit for purpose. Invest in learning about fetal physiology and how to interpret heart rate patterns and don’t delegate this to a computer!
Does CTG monitoring during labour save lives?
The evidence on CTG monitoring vs intermittent auscultation during labour does NOT prove that CTG significantly reduces stillbirth or neonatal mortality rates, in either low or high-risk populations. Professionals and academics MUST avoid misleading people about the evidence.
Birth Small Talk 