Results
Amongst the 400 consecutive pregnant women, 103 (25.75%) were enrolled
during the latent phase of labour and 297 (74.25%) were enrolled prior
to induction of labour. The most common indication for labour induction
was spontaneous ruptured of membranes (31.99%). Median (IQR) of
gestational age at enrollment was 39.57 (38.43–40.57) weeks and 63.25%
of women were nulliparous. There were no cases with absent/reversed end
diastolic flow in the umbilical artery. A total of 6 (1.50%) and 148
(37.00%) newborns required NICU and SCBU admission, respectively.
Characteristics of the study population regarding NICU/SCBU admission of
the newborns are summarised in Table S1 .
Of these participants, 34 (8.5%) women had emergency delivery due to
pathological CTG during labour, 12 (3.0%) and 22 (5.5%) women were
delivered by emergency Caesarean section and emergency operative vaginal
delivery, respectively. The maternal demographic and pregnancy
characteristics between cases requiring emergency delivery due to
pathological CTG during labour and those that did not are summarised inTable 1 . Women who required emergency delivery due to
pathological CTG during labour, compared to those that did not, had
significantly lower MCA-PI, MCA-PI z-score, Apgar scores at 1 and 5
minutes as well as umbilical cord arterial pH and base excess. On the
other hand, there were higher rates of umbilical cord arterial pH
< 7.1 and NICU admission. There were no differences in other
parameters among maternal and labour characteristics, maternal-foetal
Doppler indices, cCTG parameters and birth outcomes observed between
these two groups.
Umbilical cord arterial pH was associated with log10cCTG STV (r = 0.107, p = 0.035) but not EFW z-score and maternal-foetal
Doppler velocimetry. Whereas there was no correlation between these
prelabour parameters (EFW z-score, maternal-foetal Doppler velocimetry
and log10 cCTG STV) and umbilical cord arterial base
excess as presented in Table S2 and Table
S3 . Multivariate regression analysis demonstrated that significant
independent predictors for umbilical cord arterial pH were
log10 cCTG STV (p = 0.025) and smoking (p = 0.006) withR2 = 0.031 (Table 2) . Logistic
regression analysis demonstrated that none of these prelabour parameters
were predictive for emergency delivery due to pathological CTG during
labour and umbilical cord arterial pH < 7.1(Table 4 and Table S5) . Nonetheless,
nulliparity, maternal diabetes (pre-existing or gestational diabetes
mellitus) and EFW z-score were associated with an increased risk of
NICU/SCBU admission (Table 3) .