Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Perinatal hypoxic stress is the most important etiological factor of newborn mortality, morbidity and norological sequellae. Every year newborn asphyxia occurs in approximately four million of 130 million births and one million of newborn dies as a consequence of asphyxia, or is exposed some kind of a severe sequellae. Assessment of intrapartum fetal monitoring includes fetal pulse oksimeter and external fetal heart rate monitoring. These tests has some advantages and disadvantages and none of these methods have high sensitivity and specificity rates.The aim of our study was to investigate the reduction of fetal and neonatal mortality and morbidity rates by measuring fetal scalp lactate levels. METHODS: A total of 95 pregnant women were enrolled in the study. All the patients were misoprostol-induced and monitored with external fetal heart rate, fetal pulse oksimeter and fetal scalp lactat level. Umbilical arterial blood oxygen testing were measured and recorded. RESULTS: Fetal oxygen saturation was under 30% in 24 (25%), and fetal scalp lactat level was above 4.8 mmol/l in 15 (16%) of the patients. These results indicated a statistically significant correlation between newborn acidosis and necessity of intensive care unit (p<0.05). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: As for fetal scalp lactate monitoring is an invasive method, reflecting only the momentary lactate level, the need for repetition and the need for time and effort which means loss of time for the hypoxic fetus are the main reasons why it’s hard to take place in clinical practice. It’s not very probable for this method to be used in routine until more practical andnoninvasive methods are developed within technological improvement.

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