A scoring system for nonstressed antepartum fetal heart rate monitoring

Abstract A scoring system developed to assess nonstressed antepartum fetal heart rate records has been evaluated. The system scores from 0 to 2 for each of five factors, i.e., baseline rate, amplitude and frequency of fluctuation, decelerations, and accelerations. A total of 1,367 nonstress tests in 284 patients were retrospectively reviewed. Three groups of patients were delineated with respect to the fetal heart rate scores. When the group with the highest score of 8 to 10 and a perinatal mortality rate (PNM) rate of 4.7/1,000 was compared with the groups having intermediate (5 to 7) and low (≤4) scores, there was a highly significant increase in PNM to 69.8/1,000 (p