Does CTG monitoring work for women with risk factors?
Today’s post shares the back story behind our paper. #CTG #EFM #PerinatalMortality #CP
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IA
Can the AAT predict outcomes as well as antenatal CTG use?
This is the third post in a series I am writing about the Auscultated Acceleration Test or AAT. If you haven’t been following along and don’t know what this test is – you can read about it here. The goal of antenatal CTG monitoring is to predict which fetuses are at risk of a poor outcome relating to low oxygen levels, so action can be taken and therefore avoid death […]
Are midwives accurate? The AAT Part 2.
Last week I explained what the AAT was. This week I want to share research that compared one midwife against another, to see if they were able to generate an accurate assessment of the fetal heart rate pattern, and were able to detect accelerations as reliably as a CTG machine. If you missed last week’s post and don’t know what I’m talking about – you can find it here. How […]
What is the Auscultated Acceleration Test?
With thanks to Maryann Long, CNM, PhD, for bringing Lisa Paine’s work to my attention. I’m always fascinated about how some new ideas “stick” and are incorporated into practice, while others fall by the wayside. Despite having read widely about fetal heart rate monitoring options for the past decade, the Auscultated Acceleration Test never crossed my path. This simple approach seems to have fallen by the wayside. I want to […]
Comparing continuous CTG use with intermittent CTG use
In some settings, women are offered the option of having intermittent CTG use rather than continuous CTG use. This might look something like having 20 to 30 minutes of CTG use every hour or two, with intermittent auscultation used during the time off the CTG. A first look, this seems like it might be a way to reduce some of the downsides associated with CTG use (like the increased rate […]
Can you assess variability with intermittent auscultation?
Let me begin, like the good researcher I am, by defining some terms. Intermittent auscultation is a type of fetal heart rate monitoring. A device of some sort is used to make it easy to hear the fetal heart rate, so the person listening (auscultating) can assess certain features of the heart rate, to determine whether it is considered normal or not. Typically, a handheld Doppler device is used. This […]
What stops professionals from using intermittent auscultation?
I wrote this post back in February 2020 when this research was new. It’s a paper I often reference and use in my presentations. I’ve refreshed the post and am sharing it again because I think it contains valuable information. Research published this week by Chuey, De Vries, Dal Cin, and Low (2020) explored facilitators and barriers to the use of intermittent auscultation (IA) rather than CTG monitoring during labour. […]
Reviewing the evidence for Intermittent Auscultation
I was excited to see a new paper, setting out the evidence for intermittent auscultation in labour (Anderson, et al., 2023). It was published in a journal for US based nurse-midwives, so it relates to the context of care in that country. Let’s see how they did in terms of getting the facts right. Is their evidence accurate? They wrote that: All this is correct, except that one of the […]
Can CTGs harm? Part 3
Does CTG monitoring generate more harm than benefit for babies? Here’s the evidence….
Can CTGs harm? Part 2
What are the psychological consequences of CTG monitoring? Sadly, we don’t actually know….
Birth Small Talk 