Al Ameen Journal of Medical Sciences (Apr 2018)

Role of admission test in pregnancy

  • Vidya A. Thobbi,
  • Gururaj R. Deshpande,
  • Seema Chavadi

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 02
pp. 101 – 106

Abstract

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Introduction: Cardiotocogram is a non-invasive admission test, easily performed, interpreted and readily accepted by the patients. It was found that it could be used as screening procedure to detect pre-existing fetal hypoxia and plan early intervention to prevent adverse perinatal outcome. The present study was thus conducted to evaluate the efficacy of cardiotocogram as admission test in predicting fetal outcomes at birth. Materials & Methods: A prospective observational study was conducted in a tertiary care hospital including 400 pregnant mothers fulfilling the eligibility criteria. The admission test was conducted and interpreted for all patients. On the basis of admission test results, type of delivery and neonatal outcome at birth was assessed. Data was analyzed using SPSS ver 23.0. Results: In this study, there were 328 patients (82%) with normal AT, 37 patients (9.3%) with suspicious AT, 35 patients (8.8%) with pathological AT and a total of18% patients had abnormal AT. The incidence of fetal distress (100% vs. 31.6%), caesarean section rate (100% vs. 6.1%), low Apgar score at 5’ (50% vs. 26.1%), NICU admission (50% vs. 26.1%) was higher in pathological AT group than in normal AT. The sensitivity and specificity of NST in predicting fetal distress was 61.6% and 94.5% respectively, while the overall diagnostic accuracy was 86.4%. Conclusion: Our study supports the idea that admission test plays an important role in prediction of adverse fetal outcomes. Cardiotocogram as an admission test can be used to identify patients likely to develop adverse fetal outcomes and help in optimal utilization of limited labor room resources available.

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