title: Obstetric history and the heart-rate response of newborns to sound.
abstract: Two groups of clinically normal newborns, differing in the number of non-optimal factors in their obstetric history, were compared by measuring heart-rate response to a series of auditory stimuli. There was a significant difference between the groups in the direction of the average heart-rate response. The high risk" group showed more heart-rate acceleration and less deceleration compared with the "low-risk" group. The heart-rate responses were significantly related to the number of non-optimal obstetric conditions and to parity, but not to the maternal pre-delivery medication score. The greater the "risk" at birth, the less was the deceleration; the greater the maternal parity, the less did acceleration occur in response to auditory stimulation. There was no significant difference between the high-risk and low-rsik groups in heart-rate response trends over trials. Both groups showed reliable diminution of deceleration heart-rate response over trials.
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D005260:Female; D006339:Heart Rate; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D011247:Pregnancy; D011248:Pregnancy Complications