A New Device to Continuously Monitor Fetal Lactate and Heart Rate in Labour

Fetal intrapartum hypoxia remains one of the main causes of disability and cerebral palsy in infancy. Cardiotocography, albeit useful to monitor fetal wellbeing in labour, has important shortcomings and leads to a high number of false-positive results and often unnecessary intervention such as emergency caesarean delivery. We have been working closely with a company from Western Australia (VitalTrace) that has developed the first fetal continuous scalp lactate and heart rate monitoring in labour. Monash has recruited for the first in-fetus trial of this new device (FILM-1 study), which showed promising results and a high potential to improve the monitoring of fetal wellbeing in labour, consequently improving fetal wellbeing monitoring in labour, reducing the number of neonates affected by hypoxia and its associated sequelae, and likely reducing the number of unnecessary caesarean births that result from false-positive CTG findings. We now plan to expand the study on the use of this device in labour and ultimately conduct a larger randomised trial.