Electronic Fetal Monitoring (EFM)

This outstanding article – ‘Electronic Fetal Monitoring (EFM): A Bridge Too Far‘ comes from The Journal of Legal Medicine in the US. It provides a very clear argument against the use of electronic fetal monitoring in labour, saying, “EFM’s scientific basis is not only weak, it is almost nonexistent. Its interpretation has been proven to be significantly inconsistent even among so called experts. Its false positive rate is more than 99%. EFM was in part responsible for a five-fold increase (in the US) in C-sections, with the attendant morbidity and mortality associated with that major abdominal operation. Overall, EFM may have harmed more mothers and babies than it helped.”

ultrasound baby