Computerised fetal heart rate analysis in labour--effect of sampling rate.

OBJECTIVE To study the effect of sampling rate on the accuracy of fetal heart rate recording in labour. DESIGN Prospective observational study. METHODS AND SUBJECTS The fetal heart rate was obtained from 153 fetuses in labour. The heart rate data was sampled at a rate of 0.5 Hz (every 2 s) and the means and standard deviations of 5-min segments compared against the mean and standard deviation for all beats in the same time interval. RESULTS There was a highly significant correlation between the means (r = 0.994, p < 0.001) and standard deviations (r = 0.957, p < 0.001) of FHR sampled on successive beats compared with 2 s sampling. CONCLUSION Two second sampling of the fetal heart rate in labour will allow a highly complex analytical algorithm to process the signal in near real time for objective analysis.

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