Neonatal electroencephalographic patterns as affected by maternal drugs administered during labor and delivery

Effects of drugs used during labor and delivery on spontaneous (resting) and evoked brain electrical activity were studied in 45 normal human newborns 48 hours after delivery. Mothers received either anesthesia (general plus local) alone (group 1), anesthesia plus meperidine (group 2), anesthesia plus meperidine and promethazine (group 3), or anesthesia plus meperidine and diazepam (group 4). Autoregressive spectral analyses and subsequent stepwise discriminant analyses showed no differences in spontaneous brain electrical activity in the infants related to the type of drugs given to the mother. However, when auditory stimuli were reduced in intensity from 80 dB to 63 dB, a significant effect was found in newborn brain electrical activity between the anesthetic-only drug pattern (group 1) and the drug patterns of anesthetics with meperidine (group 2) and anesthetics with meperidine plus diazepam (group 4). The data suggest that this effect diminishes in the presence of promethazine (group 3). Evoked responses to visual, tactile, and olfactory stimuli remained unaffected.