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Objective: To assess the correlation between the total deceleration area of the fetal heart rate (FHR) pre-delivery trace and intrapartum fetal acid-base status in a low risk population., Study Design: We analyzed the electronic fetal monitoring (EFM) traces of 26 pregnancies with fetuses presenting acidemia at delivery and those of thirty controls. All laboring patients had at least 1 hour of EFM without interruption. The deceleration area was calculated, after digital analysis, with Autocad System 2004., Results: We found that the number of decelerations (8.03 +/- 3.77 vs. 4.64 +/- 3.84) and the total deceleration area/hour (35.56 +/- 11.87 vs. 17.81 +/- 9.38) were significantly higher in the study group than in the control group., Conclusions: Our results show that quantitative analysis of the deceleration areas by digitized cardiotocography may have a discriminative capacity to predict fetal acidemia at delivery.

The Authors, by means of surface E.M.G. have investigated the perineal potentials. The choice of surface E.M.G. is due to the good acceptance of the method by the patients, as it does not interfere with muscular activity and mental concentration, which are fundamental for a good application of R.A.T.

The Authors, by means of surface E.M.G. of perineum, have analyzed statistically the potentials registered in two groups of pregnant women in labor, the first prepared according to the R.A.T. method, the second utilized as a control group. The complete automatization of the analysis was allowed to exclude any bias. The differences of the perineal potentials registered in the groups were statistically significant.