Bellyband linked to app may prevent stillbirths
The International Stillbirth Alliance Conference for 2017 (ISA 2017), hosted for the first time in Ireland, has attracted delegates from around the globe, including stillbirth researchers, scientists, midwives, obstetricians and bereaved parents, and includes a short film tomorrow, entitled After My Baby Died, involving parents who attended Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH).
A number of abstracts, just published in open-access journal, BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, will be presented at the conference, including one which discusses the development of a prototype wearable ‘bellyband’ for continuous monitoring of foetal ECG and foetal movement during the third trimester.
The US-based authors of the paper say that foetal death “usually occurs” when the gestation is not being actively monitored.
“However, rapid advances in the development of ‘wearable’ physiologic monitors linked to smartphone apps allow us to envision novel methods for evaluating the health of a pregnancy, potentially allowing intervention before foetal death or damage from asphyxia occur,” the authors say.
The prototype examined in this study was comprised of a wearable, fabric band, fitted with miniaturised electrodes and worn around the abdomen of the mum-to-be. The study’s authors said the “bellyband” can connect wirelessly to a smart phone app “that monitors, analyses, and transmits the maternal and foetal heart rates”, and the hope is it will reduce preventable foetal damage and stillbirths.
A second abstract, based on a New Zealand study, found that the supine (lying on your back) going-to-sleep position is a “major risk factor for term stillbirth”.
It found the magnitude of risk may be greater for term pregnancies (³37 weeks), compared with those between 28 and 36 weeks.
Previous studies have found that going to sleep supine may increase late stillbirth (³28 weeks’) risk by more than two-fold, compared to the left-side sleeping position.
Another paper, involving CUMH consultant obstetrician/gynaecologist, Keelin O’Donoghue, who chaired the organising committee for ISA 2017, and Cork-based healthcare chaplain, Daniel Nuzum, examines ‘The public awareness of stillbirth’.
Almost four in five of the 999 participants in the study agreed that all stillbirths should be medically investigated. More than half of respondents were unable to identify any risk factors for stillbirth.
Dr O’Donoghue, writing in today’s Irish Examiner, said study of specific causes of stillbirth has been hindered “by the absence of uniform protocols of investigation, lack of agreement on classification systems for deaths, as well as public concerns about postmortem investigations”.
“Clinicians should continue to advocate for post-mortem examination of the baby and placenta, rather than inferring a cause,” she said.
In the developed world, one in 200 infants is stillborn. In Ireland, the 2015 Perinatal Mortality Annual Report describes 294 infants who were stillborn.
