[The surveillance of pregnancies with suspected placental dysfunction. III. Antepartum fetal heart rate: the significance of baseline irregularity and late decelerations (author's transl)].

Silent patterns of baseline irregularity during 10 or more minutes or late decelerations point to a fetal hypoxia. Cardiotokograms with this phenomen are described as suspected. Silent patterns with simultaneous late decelerations are considered as pathological. They prove with great probability a chronical fetal hypoxia. We found them almost only among intrauterine growth retardations and intrauterine fetal deaths. Total disappearance of changes in rate and of amplitude were found only few days before the intrauterine death.