Epidural Labour Analgesia and Cardiotocography

Overview

Objective:
The increase of cardiotocographic abnormalities, such as late decelerations, bradycardia and reduced variability have been reported with epidural analgesia (EDA) in some studies. The aim of our study was to assess the influence of epidural analgesia on the incidence of the pathological cardiotocografic patterns.Design: A clinical study.Setting: Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Jessenius Medical Faculty of Comenius University, Martin, Slovak Republic.Methods: Clinical group consists of 200 parturients, who borne in our department from 1997 to 2000. The epidural group of parturients (n = 100) borne under epidural analgesia, the control group of (n = 100) borne under other resp. no analgethic method. We compared BFHR, variability and the incidence of accelerations and decelerations in CTG between both groups. All cardiotocographic patterns were evaluated by Fischer score. For statistic evaluation was used Student t-test.Results: We did not find any statistically significant differences in Fischer score between epidural and control group.Conclusion: The epidural labour analgesia is safe method of ease pain during labour. In our study we confirmed, that EDA is not responsible for the increase of patological cardiotocographic patterns.

Key words:
epidural labour analgesia, cardiotocography, Fischer score