Relationship between immediate postpartum umbilical cord pH, fetal distress and neonatal outcome

Abstract

Objectives: To determine relationship between immediate postpartum umbilical cord pH, fetal distress and neonatal outcome Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted in the department of Gynaecology, Lady Reading Hospital Peshawar, Pakistan, from January 2019 to July 2019. This study included 27 full-term pregnant women who had abnormal CTG during the active or latent phase of labour. Data were analyzed by IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 23.0. Results: Out of 27, most patients 13 (48.14%) were in the age group 20-25 years,11 (40.74%) to 26-30 years and 3 (11.11%) belonged to 31-35 years of age group. CTG abnormalities were severe bradycardia, late deccelerations and persistent variable deccelerations with loss of baseline variability. Of all delivered babies, 21 (77%) babies had birth weight<3.5 kg and 6 (22%) had >3.5 kg birth weight. 20 (74.07%) had acidosis (pH <7.2) at the time of birth, of which one had severe hypoxemia and acidosis with pH 6.85. APGAR score at 0 minutes showed a strong positive correlation (r=0.818, p= <0.001) with cord pH, while APGAR at five minutes was also strongly correlated (r= 773, p=<0.001). Of all babies 18(66.66%) with PH less than 7.2 were admitted in NICU while only 2 babies with PH more than 7.2 were admitted. (p value= 0.005). Conclusion: Low umbilical cord pH values of babies born by cesarean section (for fetal distress) are strongly correlated with low APGAR score at birth and higher rates of NICU admission. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.7.2536 How to cite this:Syed W, Liaqat N, Qazi Q, Yasmeen S. Relationship between immediate postpartum umbilical cord pH, fetal distress and neonatal outcome. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(7):1529-1532. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.36.7.2536 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.