Mums-To-Be Warned Off Baby Monitors

Pregnant women are being advised not to use personal monitors - known as Doppler devices - to listen to their baby's heartbeat at home over fears that they may lead to delays in seeking help for reduced fetal movements.

In this week's British Medical Journal, Dr Thomas Aust and colleagues from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Arrowe Park Hospital, Wirral describe the case of a 27-year-old woman who presented to their labour ward 32 weeks into her first pregnancy with reduced fetal movements.

She had first noted a reduction in her baby's activity two days earlier but had used her own Doppler device to listen to the heartbeat and reassured herself that everything was normal.

Further monitoring by the antenatal care team was not reassuring and the baby was delivered by caesarean section later that evening.

The baby remained on the special care baby unit for eight weeks and is making steady progress.

It is being said that non-professional use of such devices as a hand-held Doppler device can cause more problems than they solve.

They assesses the presence of fetal heart pulsations only at a particular moment, and is supposed to be used by midwives and obstetricians to check for viability or for intermittent monitoring during labour.

The report's authors said that, in untrained hands, it is more likely that blood flow through the placenta or the mother's main blood vessels will be heard instead.

Following this case, they searched the internet and found that such a fetal Doppler device could be hired for £10 a month or even bought for just £25.50 on auction website eBay.

Although the companies offering sales state that the device is not intended to replace recommended antenatal care, they also make claims such as "you will be able to locate and hear the heartbeat with excellent clarity".

As a result, the advice is no to use them at all.

"It is difficult to say whether self monitoring altered the outcome in this case," said the authors, but they now have posters in their own antenatal areas recommending that patients do not use these devices at all.

(BMcC/KMcA)