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Updated: Jul 15, 2026
Fetal Mouse Cardiovascular Imaging Using a High-frequency Ultrasound (30/45MHZ) System
Published on: May 5, 2018
Deceleration area of fetal heart rate trace and fetal acidemia at delivery: a case-control study
Stefano Raffaele Giannubilo1, Giorgia Buscicchio, Lucia Gentilucci
1Department of Obstetrics, Marche Polytechnic University, Ancona, Italy.
Objective:
To assess the correlation between the total deceleration area of the fetal heart rate (FHR) pre-delivery trace and intrapartum fetal acid-base status in a low risk population.
Study Design:
We analyzed the electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) traces of 26 pregnancies with fetuses presenting acidemia at delivery and those of thirty controls. All laboring patients had at least 1 hour of EFM without interruption. The deceleration area was calculated, after digital analysis, with Autocad System 2004.
Results:
We found that the number of decelerations (8.03 +/- 3.77 vs. 4.64 +/- 3.84) and the total deceleration area/hour (35.56 +/- 11.87 vs. 17.81 +/- 9.38) were significantly higher in the study group than in the control group.
Conclusions:
Our results show that quantitative analysis of the deceleration areas by digitized cardiotocography may have a discriminative capacity to predict fetal acidemia at delivery.
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