The monitoring of labor by telemetry

It has been a practice in Finland and many other countries to keep women in the supine position during labor and especially during the second half of the first stage. After rupture of the fetal membranes and during internal fetal heart rate monitoring, patients are attached to the bed, and electrical wires and infusion lines are connected to them. However, the upright position has been claimed to be physiologically superior to the recumbent position [8], based partly on clinical observations and partly on labor practices among primitive peoples. On the other hand, fetal monitoring considerably increases the safety of the fetus even in mothers not considered to be highrisk parturients [4]. Telemetry was introduced into biomedical use over ten years ago [l, 2, 6] and has been studied and improved thereafter by many groups [5, 9, 12, 13], It has recently been reported that the length of labor has been shortened [3] and less analgesics required [3, 11] in mothers monitored by telemetric cardiotocography. Fetal heart rate and uterine contractions can be reliably transferred by a telemetric System to a conventional cardiotocograph [7, 10, 11], allowing the mother t o choose her position freely. The present study was designed to determine the duration of labor and need of analgesia in normal parturients monitored by telemetry. The second purpose was to study the safety of telemetry during the upright position after ruptured fetal membranes. Curriculum vitae