Physicians preparing to deliver a baby look at fetal heart rate patterns to guide them in deciding whether or not to perform a C-section.
However U.S. researchers showed that heart rate patterns may not be a good indicator of a baby’s health, and in fact may lead to unnecessary interventions and higher costs, according to a new study published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Dr. Marc Jackson and colleagues studied fetal heart rate patterns from more than 48,000 labor and delivery cases at 10 hospitals over a 28-month period.
The fetal heart rates were then classified using a system developed in 2008. Category II fetal heart rate patterns showed up most often, occurring in 84 percent of all labors. They also found that the amount of time spent in category II increased in the two hours before delivery. This also coincided with lower Apgar scores and increased admissions to the NICU.
Regardless of those statistics, the vast majority of category II babies had no short-term problems after delivery. This means that using category II heart rate patterns as an indicator of fetal health is an unreliable method, researchers say.
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