A STUDY published in the New England Journal of Medicine has seriously questioned the benefit of foetal monitoring. Medical researchers have uncovered a link between the changing heart rate of a soon to be born child and the risk of giving birth to a baby with cerebral palsy. But the telltale heart rate is so common among healthy babies, they say, that there is little value in testing for it.
The study, by Dr Karin Nelson of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, is the latest in a series which has demonstrated that devices used to monitor electronically the foetus during labour are no better at protecting a child from harm than occasionally listening for the baby's heartbeat with a stethoscope.
Commenting on the research, Dr Dermot MacDonald of the National Maternity Hospital, Dublin, said that there is a pressing need to inform the public, as well as the medical and legal professions, that cerebral palsy is not often caused by events during labour. In an editorial in the journal, he said that despite the medical advances of the last 25 years, the risk of cerebral palsy has not changed and the cause in most cases remains unknown.