Figure 2 (Illustration 2)
Schematic illustration of IA of FHR with late deceleration: Care is
required not to mistake the recovering late deceleration for an
acceleration.6 Hence it is safer to start auscultation
in the later part of contraction. Actually counting fetal heart tones
over 1 minute with a Pinard stethoscope or
Doppler-device1,2 will give a figure of about 140 bpm
not representative of the true baseline, with a significant risk of
missing detection of the late deceleration and inability to easily and
flexibly extend the auscultation duration.