Aim: Our purpose was to study fetal arterial oxygen saturation trends by continuous pulse oximetry during labour in subjects with and without umbilical cord encirclement.
Material and methods: The study was carried out in 46 pregnant women in the 38.9 +/- 1.4 weeks of pregnancy and the 15 of them with umbilical cord encirclement, established respectively after delivery. The fetus was monitored continuously with an Oxford S 8000 system and pulse oximeter Nellcor N-400. The medium parameters of FSpO2 values during progressive stages of labour in both groups were shown. The importance of the correlation was assessed using the t-Student's table of N--2 degree of freedom.
Results: In those two groups no significant difference between FspO2 value in first stage of labour was found. In second stage of labour our study showed tendency for higher oxygen saturation values in foetuses without umbilical cord compression.