[Fetal monitoring using fetal movement count perceived by patient]

To clarify the clinical significance of subjective fetal movements, I took and compared the fetal movements count (FMC) and its decreasing rate in 418 pregnant women who were classified into 2 groups, fetal poor outcome group and fetal good outcome group. The main results obtained were as follows: Subjective fetal movements were more frequent at night. The weekly mean number of FMC was highest in the 32nd week of pregnancy, and afterwards gradually decreased. Although the fetal poor outcome group had no distinctive average FMC throughout the course of pregnancy compared with that of the good outcome group, 48.8% of cases having a rate of decrease of 70% or over were found in fetal poor outcome group. On the other hand those showing fetal poor outcome were only 5.5% of the cases showing a decrease rate of less than 70%. There were significantly more cases having a rate of decrease of 70% in the cases showing non-reactive in the nonstress test. We concluded that the decreasing rate of FMC appeared useful in assessing the fetal prognosis.