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Friday, March 26, 2004
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Monitoring the heart rate of a baby, which is typically performed during labor, is not useful in detecting brain injuries that lead to cerebral palsy, according to research presented Friday at a meeting in Houston. This may explain why the rate of occurrence of cerebral palsy has not changed in nearly 50 years. "Electronic fetal monitoring was introduced in the late 1960s and it was hoped that we could detect which babies were experiencing (low oxygen levels) during labor and then intervene," lead author Dr. Janyne Althaus, from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, told Reuters Health. "Such monitoring gradually became standard of care," she explained, without ever being tested to see if it actually did help prevent cerebral palsy. "In our study, we found no significant difference in any monitoring characteristics between infants diagnosed with brain injury...and healthy infants," Althaus noted. This suggests that "electronic fetal monitoring really can't tell us the status of the baby's brain." The findings stem from a study of 40 brain-injured infants and 40 healthy infants born at one hospital between July 1999 and September 2001. Althaus presented her team's research at the annual meeting of the Society for Gynecologic Investigation. As noted, no differences were seen between the groups in any monitoring parameter, including, among others, fetal heart rate, time spent with a fast or slow heart rate, and variation in the heart rate. "Although these findings are somewhat discouraging, it's good for us to know the limitations of our technology," Althaus said. "The assumption has always been that fetal brain injury is something that should be easy to pick up. Apparently, it's not." |
