One third of women giving birth in the United Kingdom receive anaesthetics that are known to prolong the duration of labour. One reason for this is that the drugs used for anaesthesia block the signals sent from the nerve endings to the brain, which normally signal when to push. This is not insignificant, as a longer labour carries a higher risk of complications for both the mother and the child. The device developed by the scientists from Lafayette is attached to the head of the unborn child and the woman's perineum using electrodes. It is connected to a standard laptop and provides information about the baby's movements and the mother's muscle contractions. The effectiveness of the pushing is displayed on a clear diagram and by means of a sound whose pitch and pulse frequency depend on the current effectiveness of the pushing and the baby's movements. The invention was tested on a group of 45 women, while another group of 24 women in labour served as a control group. It turned out that the average duration of the pushing phase was 19 minutes shorter for women who used the device (58 minutes compared to 77 minutes), which was associated with a lower incidence of complications than in women in the control group. Author: medexpress.pl 18 February 2015
