Telephone Fetal Heart Rate Monitoring in South Australia

EDITORIAL COMMENT: We accepted this paper for publication to remind readers again (A) that fetal cardiotocographs can be transmitted, over the telephone for interpretation by an expert. As the authors say this paper is not intended to argue the merits of cardiotocography or its indications. However we wish to comment on the authors' statement that gestational diabetes and hypertension are questionable indications for cardiotocography. These 2 conditions are classically associated with intrauterine death and in the case of gestational diabetes there may be no clinical warning such as the presence of fetal growth retardation, deaths in this condition being precisely similar to those that occur in women with insulin‐dependant prepregnancy diabetes mellitus (B). These are the very conditions in which cardiotocography may show the features of impending fetal death and hence indicate immediate delivery.