Measures of acidosis with repetitive umbilical cord occlusions leading to fetal asphyxia in the near-term ovine fetus.

Objective: Increasing frequency of severe variable decelerations is associated with acidemia. However, there is little understanding of its development or normalization rate.

Study Design: To quantify the time course of acidemia, 10 near-term fetal sheep underwent a series of mild (1 minute every 5 minutes), moderate (1 minute every 3 minutes), and severe (1 minute every 2 minutes) umbilical cord occlusions (UCO), lasting 1 hour each or until fetal arterial pH decreased to less than 7.

Mechanisms of impaired nephrogenesis with fetal growth restriction: altered renal transcription and growth factor expression.

Objective: Maternal food restriction during pregnancy results in growth-restricted newborns and reduced glomerular number, contributing to programmed offspring hypertension. We investigated whether reduced nephrogenesis may be programmed by dysregulation of factors controlling ureteric bud branching and mesenchyme to epithelial transformation.

Study Design: At 10 to 20 days' gestation, Sprague Dawley pregnant rats (n = 6/group) received ad libitum food; food-restricted rats were 50% food restricted.

Fetal ST segment heart rate analysis in labor: improvement of intervention criteria using interpolated base deficit.

Objective: The addition of ST waveform analysis (STAN, Neoventa, Sweden) to fetal heart rate (FHR) tracings has been demonstrated to improve fetal outcome and reduce operative delivery rates, though the actual level of fetal acidosis at which STAN indicates intervention has not been assessed. We sought to determine if FHR ST segment analysis recommends intervention at appropriate levels of fetal acidosis.

Methods: FHR tracings of 10 acidotic and 10 non-acidotic infants with FHR tracings having a minimum of one STAN flag were retrospectively analyzed.