Until recently, there had never been a randomised controlled trial comparing wireless, or telemetry, CTG monitoring with wired CTG monitoring. I was delighted to see that has now changed, with the publication of a small trial conducted in Turkey (Çakir & Dağlar, 2026). Here’s what you need to know about their research.
What did they do?
The research team enrolled a group of women aged 18 to 40 years, giving birth after 37 weeks to one baby, who were in active labour. They calculated that they would need 88 participants for the study to show a difference in maternal comfort, if one existed. They recruited this number of women and randomly allocated them to wireless CTG use or wired CTG use.
The outcomes they wanted to know about were comfort (measured with the Childbirth Comfort Questionnaire), birth satisfaction (using the Birth Satisfaction Scale – Revised), and a visual analog score of pain. Pain and comfort were assessed at 8 – 10 cm of cervical dilation and satisfaction within the first three days of birth.
What did they find?
Mean comfort scores were not significantly different between the two groups of women – either for the total score of any of the three domains that it is made up from (physical, environmental, psychospiritual). There was a small, but statistically significant difference in pain: 7.8 out of 10 for women allocated to wireless CTG use and 8.7 out of ten for women allocated to wired CTG use. Birth satisfaction was also improved – a score of 21.1 for the wireless group and 17.7 for the wired group. This was explained by better scores for the quality of care domain in the Birth Satisfaction Scale.
They asked participants several other questions. More women allocation to wireless CTG were happy that this is what they got (63.6% vs 38.6% for wired CTG). Women using wireless CTG reported the best position for coping with contractions was while walking, while for women with wireless CTG reported this sitting or squatting – most likely do the limitations on how far they might walk. More women in the wireless group reported feeling positive about their birth than women in the wired group (77.3% vs 52.3%). “Reactive” CTG traces were more common when wireless CTGs were in use (93.2% vs 81.8%).
Labour duration was shorter with wireless CTG use – 7.2 hours rather than 8.6 hours with wired CTG.
What this means
The authors identify in their list of limitations that women and staff (obviously) could tell which form of monitoring was in use. Staff may have provided different levels of support for mobility knowing which equipment was in use. Women may have been sold on the idea of wireless monitoring as the superior option and this might have coloured their experiences of their labour.
This is a relatively small study and may not be generalisable to high-income countries. It is a good start however – finally offering us the first randomised controlled trial about wireless CTGs. Other researchers can now replicate, or improve on their study design, to verify whether the findings are consistent across multiple settings or not.
If you are looking for a great idea for a midwifery research project, perhaps you could consider taking this on where you work. And reach out to me if you would like me as part of your team.
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References
Çakir, D., & Dağlar, G. (2026). The effect of the wireless fetal monitoring used during birth on the women’s comfort, labor pain, and birth satisfaction. Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology Research, 52(9), e70466. https://doi.org/10.1111/jog.70466
Categories: CTG, EFM, New research
Tags: Birth satisfaction, comfort, pain, telemetry, Turkey, wireless
