Semin Fetal Neonatal Med
November 2024
Fetal hypoxemia is ubiquitous during labor and, when severe, is associated with perinatal death and long-term neurodevelopmental disability. Adverse outcomes are highly associated with barriers to care, such that developing countries have a disproportionate burden of perinatal injury. The prevalence of hypoxemia and its link to injury can be obscure, simply because the healthy fetus has robust coordinated defense mechanisms, spearheaded by the peripheral chemoreflex, such that hypoxemia only becomes apparent in the minority of cases associated with stillbirth, severe metabolic acidemia or adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes.
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