We present a case of fetal tachycardia associated with maternal use of long-acting pseudoephedrine, an over-the-counter decongestant. No previous studies exist on pseudoephedrine or other over-the-counter decongestants and their effect on the fetal heart. The elevated fetal heart rate led to difficulty in interpreting a nonstress test. The normal human fetal heart rate at term is 110 to 160 bea...

OBJECTIVE Compare the accuracy and reliability of fetal heart rate identification from maternal abdominal fetal electrocardiogram signals (ECG) and Doppler ultrasound with a fetal scalp electrode. DESIGN Prospective open method equivalence study. SETTING Three urban teaching hospitals in the Northeast United States. SAMPLE 75 women with normal pregnancies in labor at >37 weeks of gestatio...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of fetal hiccups on fetal heart rate from 20 weeks of gestation onward. METHODS One thousand four hundred and fifty-six collected fetal heart rate tracings from three cohorts that participated in longitudinal studies of fetal neurobehavioral development were reviewed retrospectively for fetal hiccups. Tracings were recorded at fo...

The ontogeny of fetal autonomic, motoric, state, and interactive functioning was investigated longitudinally in a sample of 31 healthy fetuses from 20 weeks through term. Fetal heart rate and movement data were collected during 50 min of doppler-based fetal monitoring at 6 gestational ages. Measures of fetal heart rate and variability, activity level and vigor, behavioral state, and reactivity ...

BACKGROUND Misinterpretation of the maternal heart rate (MHR) as fetal may lead to significant errors in fetal heart rate (FHR) interpretation. In this study we hypothesized that the removal of these MHR-FHR ambiguities would improve FHR analysis during the final hour of labor. METHODS Sixty-one MHR and FHR recordings were simultaneously acquired in the final hour of labor. Removal of MHR-FHR...

This paper describes a new method for extracting the fetal heart rate (fHR) and the fetal heart rate variability (fHRV) signal non-invasively using abdominal maternal electrocardiogram (mECG) recordings. The extraction is based on the fundamental frequency (Fourier’s) theorem. The fundamental frequency of the mother’s electrocardiogram signal (fo-m) is calculated directly from the abdominal sig...