What’s new in research?
Post term risks, colour coded CTG interpretation, anaemia, and bias – research that caught my eye recently
New horizons for fetal monitoring: Photoacoustic assessment of the fetal brain and placenta
There is increasing recognition that CTG monitoring hasn’t delivered on its promise to accurately identify the fetus who would benefit from early birth, and therefore has failed to improve perinatal outcomes. This has opened a space for researchers to begin to investigate novel approaches that might prove to be a better tool than the CTG. One of these novel technologies is photo-acoustic assessment. Kang and colleagues from Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, […]
Four things every person working in maternity care needs to know about CTGs
Here are the four things I wish everyone working in maternity care knew about CTG monitoring
Being with woman, not with machine
CTGs draw attention from the woman to the technology. Can different technology solve the problem?
Could this be the solution? Transabdominal fetal oximetry
Could measuring oxygen levels of the fetus directly be the answer we are looking for? @ChristineEast2
Physiological CTG interpretation – I have questions
The history of maternity care is littered with stories of half-baked science that becomes embedded in practice and only too late is discovered to be ineffective and challenging to step away from.
“Safety theatre”: fetal monitoring and faulty logic
Catherine Williams recently introduced me to the term “safety theatre”. New research points out why investing in CTG monitors and education won’t improve safety. @BerksMaternity
Mysterious cats and CTG monitoring
I once wrote a post about Dr Who and alternative universes, highlighting the way that people make meaning of their individual experiences. It is important for health professionals to reflect on the way we make meaning because it is easy to slip into what are known as cognitive biases. We can’t always avoid these, but it does help to have examples of these biases to increase the chance that we […]
Birth Small Talk 