Monitoring the foetal heart : the foetal E. C. G.

Abstract

The first serious attempts made at recording the foetal heart were in the year 1906. However the results were poor and the matter was dropped for many years. This was due mainly to the small impulse received but also because of the gross amount of interference which made the recordings very difficult to read let alone to decipher and deduce anything from them. Later, a group at Yale university was achieving considerable success by picking up the abdominal signal of the foetal heart, and feeding the impulses received (both maternal and foetal) into a computer system which amplified the foetal impulse periodically at regular intervals. This was a considerable advance in recording, but it had its limitations. Whenever the foetal heart was irregular the amplification set periodically was out of step with the foetal impulse and failed miserably.