In a slight departure from normal programming, I’m tackling perineal trauma today. This is a topic I have posted about before (like this, this, and this), and have contributed to research in this area (Allen, Small, & Lee, 2022). A bit of background In the birth-world, the term perineum is generally used to mean the area between the back of the vagina and in front of the anus (back passage). […]
Hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy (or HIE) is a condition affecting newborn infants. As the name suggests, it relates to low oxygen supply (hypoxia), and / or reduced blood flow (ischaemia) causing damage (-pathy) to the brain (encephalo-). Other parts of the body might also show signs of damage from low oxygen, like the kidneys or the gut. It is diagnosed when there is a combination of high acid levels in umbilical […]
A recently published paper from Taiwan has caught my eye (Cheng, et al., 2023). Researchers don’t often find new technology can reduce the caesarean section rate, but that’s what this group have done. Let’s dig in and see what it was all about. (The paper is open access so feel free to grab a copy and read along with me). What was the new tech? The authors described a newly […]
Can you accurately guess fetal blood pressure from the heart rate pattern? #AI #CTG #EFM #FetalMonitoring #Physiology #Sheep
If you wouldn’t use runes to decide whether to do a cesarean section, why would you use a #CTG?
Does #STAN reduce the #caesarean rate when #CTG monitoring is in use? New Australian research!
What is the relationship between maternal stress and fetal heart rate patterns? And what does this mean for maternity care?
All aspects of maternity care arise as consequences of the decisions that imperfect humans make, often structured by imperfect guidelines, derived from an imperfect or absent research base.
Maternal #anaemia reduces the incidence of abnormal #CTG patterns. That’s a surprise!
If we don’t understand physiology, we don’t know what we are doing when we are monitoring the fetus. What’s the latest on physiological control of the fetal heart rate?
Birth Small Talk 