[Studies on the influence of maternal delivery position on fetal status]

The maternal delivery position was evaluated in 148-full term parturient women with various factors including quantitative fetal heart rate (FHR) analysis, the duration of delivery, neonatal Apgar score, the gases and catecholamine in umbilical cord arterial blood and neonatal heart rate (NHR) at 5 minutes after birth. FHR factors, including the FHR score, fetal distress (FD) index, FHR baseline, its variability and acceleration were determined every 5 minutes with a microcomputerized automatic analyser. The rates of vacuum extraction and neonatal depression were lower in the sitting primiparous group than in the supine group. The catecholamine in the umbilical arterial blood and the 5 minutes NHR showed insignificant differences between the two groups. Blood gases in the umbilical arterial blood in the multiparous supine group were significantly better (p less than 0.05) than in the sitting group. The FD index was lower in the primiparous sitting group than that in the supine. The FHR score, FHR baseline and variability amplitude in the sitting group were better than that in the supine. However, there was no significantly favorable difference between factors for any of the sitting and supine groups analysed.