1. Intrapartum fetal heart rate assessment
Dr dabbaghi

2. Assessment of the fetus during labor is a challenging task
Assessment of the fetus during labor is a challenging task. The rationale for monitoring the fetal heart rate (FHR) is that FHR patterns are indirect markers of the fetal cardiac and medullary responses to blood volume changes, acidemia, and hypoxemia, since the brain modulates heart rate.

3. EFFECTIVENESS OF INTRAPARTUM FHR MONITORING
  The primary goal of FHR monitoring is to identify hypoxemic and acidotic fetuses in whom timely intervention will prevent death. A secondary goal is to avoid fetal neurologic injury, if possible.

4. A 2013 systematic review of 13 randomized trials (two of high quality) including >37,000 women (both low and high risk) that compared continuous electronic FHR monitoring to intermittent auscultation found no significant difference between techniques in:
Perinatal mortality
Cerebral palsy
Cord blood acidosis
Hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy
Neurodevelopmental impairment at
Apgar score <4 at 5 minutes
Neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission

5. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommends:
INDICATIONS 
The United States Preventive Services Task Force and the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care have made the following statements :
Routine electronic FHR monitoring for low-risk women in labor is not recommended
There is insufficient evidence to recommend for or against intrapartum electronic FHR monitoring for high-risk pregnant women.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommends:
Continuous electronic FHR monitoring for high risk women
Intermittent auscultation for low risk women
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) stated:
High risk pregnancies (eg, preeclampsia, suspected growth restriction, type 1 diabetes mellitus) should be monitored continuously during labor.
Either electronic FHR monitoring or intermittent auscultation is acceptable in uncomplicated patients.

6. EQUIPMENT AND TECHNIQUES

7. Internal (Direct) Electronic Monitoring
Direct fetal heart measurement is accomplished by attaching a bipolar spiral electrode directly to the fetus
The wire electrode penetrates the fetal scalp, and the second pole is a metal wing on the electrode.
The two wires of the bipolar electrode are attached to a reference electrode on the maternal thigh to eliminate electrical interference.
The electrical fetal cardiac signal—P wave, QRS complex, and T wave—is amplified and fed into a cardiotachometer for heart rate calculation.
The peak R-wave voltage is the portion of the fetal electrocardiogram most reliably detected.

10. External (Indirect) Electronic Monitoring
The fetal heart rate is detected through the maternal abdominal wall using the ultrasound Doppler principle.
Ultrasound waves undergo a shift in frequency as they are reflected from moving fetal heart valves and from pulsatile blood ejected during systole.
The unit consists of a transducer that emits ultrasound and a sensor to detect a shift in frequency of the reflected sound.
The transducer is placed on the maternal abdomen at a site where fetal heart action is best detected.
A coupling gel must be applied because air conducts ultrasound waves poorly.
The device is held in position by a belt.

12. Fetal Heart Rate Patterns

13. Baseline Fetal Heart Activity
This refers to the modal characteristics that prevail apart from periodic accelerations or decelerations associated with uterine contractions.
Descriptive characteristics of baseline fetal heart activity include:
rate
beat-to-beat variability
fetal arrhythmia
sinusoidal or saltatory fetal heart rates.

14. Rate With increasing fetal maturation, the heart rate decreases.
The baseline fetal heart rate decreased an average of 24 bpm between 16 weeks and term, or approximately 1 beat/min per week.
This normal gradual slowing of the fetal heart rate is thought to correspond to maturation of parasympathetic (vagal) heart control.
The baseline fetal heart rate is the approximate mean rate rounded to increments of 5 bpm during a 10-minute tracing segment.
In any 10-minute window, the minimum interpretable baseline duration must be at least 2 minutes.

15. Rate
If the baseline fetal heart rate is less than 110 bpm, it is termed bradycardia.
If the baseline rate is greater than 160 bpm, it is termed tachycardia.
The average fetal heart rate is considered the result of tonic balance between accelerator and decelerator influences on pacemaker cells.
In this concept, the sympathetic system is the accelerator influence, and the parasympathetic system is the decelerator factor mediated via vagal slowing of heart rate.

16. Rate
Heart rate also is under the control of arterial chemoreceptors such that both hypoxia and hypercapnia can modulate rate.
More severe and prolonged hypoxia, with a rising blood lactate level and severe metabolic acidemia, induces a prolonged fall in heart rate.

17. Rate
Bradycardia
Tachycardia
Wandering Baseline

18. Beat-to-Beat Variability
Baseline variability is an important index of cardiovascular function and appears to be regulated largely by the autonomic nervous system.
That is, a sympathetic and parasympathetic “push and pull” mediated via the sinoatrial node produces moment-to-moment or beat-to-beat oscillation of the baseline heart rate.
Such heart rate change is defined as baseline variability.

19. Beat-to-Beat Variability
short term
Short-term variability reflects the instantaneous change in fetal heart rate from one beat—or R wave—to the next.
This variability is a measure of the time interval between cardiac systoles (Fig ).
Short-term variability can most reliably be determined to be normally present only when electrocardiac cycles are measured directly with a scalp electrode.

20. Beat-to-Beat Variability
long term
Long-term variability is used to describe the oscillatory changes during 1 minute and result in the waviness of the baseline.
The normal frequency of such waves is three to five cycles per minute

24. Increased Variability
Several physiological and pathological processes can affect or interfere with beat-to-beat variability.
Fetal breathing
Fetal body movements
advancing gestation
Fetal gender

26. Decreased Variability
Diminished beat-to-beat variability can be an ominous sign indicating a seriously compromised fetus.
loss of variability in combination with decelerations was associated with fetal acidemia.
Decreased variability was defined as 5 or fewer bpm excursion of the baseline.

27. Decreased Variability
The precise pathological mechanisms by which fetal hypoxemia results in diminished beat-to-beat variability are not totally understood.
Interestingly, mild degrees of fetal hypoxemia have been reported actually to increase variability, at least at the outset of the hypoxic episode .
According to Dawes,it seems probable that the loss of variability is a result of metabolic acidemia that causes depression of the fetal brainstem or the heart itself.
Thus, diminished beat-to-beat variability, when it reflects fetal compromise, likely reflects acidemia rather than hypoxia.

28. Decreased Variability
A common cause of diminished beat-to-beat variability is administration of analgesic drugs during labor.
narcotics
barbiturates
phenothiazines
tranquilizers
general anesthetics
Magnesium sulfate

29. Decreased Variability
It is generally believed that reduced baseline heart rate variability is the single most reliable sign of fetal compromise.

30. Decreased Variability
In summary, beat-to-beat variability is affected by various pathological and physiological mechanisms.
Variability has considerably different meaning depending on the clinical setting.
The development of decreased variability in the absence of decelerations is unlikely to be due to fetal hypoxia (Davidson, 1992).
A persistently flat fetal heart rate baseline—absent variability—within the normal baseline rate range and without decelerations may reflect a previous insult to the fetus that has resulted in neurological damage.