Preterm delivery monitors

The answer is C.

Portable home monitors send information to an office in hopes that signs of a mother's premature delivery will be recognized. Researchers at 11 centers around the country analyzed nearly 35,000 hours of recordings from 306 women and found, unfortunately, that the monitors didn't help.

Yes, women who gave birth prematurely did have a few more contractions than women whose pregnancy lasted the full term of 37 weeks. But the machines didn't pick up enough of a difference in contraction patterns to predict who would be premature.

The findings -- which came out in the January 24, 2002 issue of the The New England Journal of Medicine -- means the machines, which cost up to $100 per day, aren't much help for a serious problem. Premature babies are at risk for serious infections and problems in the lungs and intestines.

The study, by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, also found that such methods as measuring the cervix or collecting a substance known as fetal fibronectin from the cervix were of little help in predicting premature births.

RESOURCES

• Read an abstract of the NEJM article online.
• For an excellent overview of preterm labor, we recommend this article published in the February 1999 issue of American Family Physician by Dr. David G. Weismiller, of the East Carolina University School of Medicine.

February 9, 2002

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