Science / Medicine : Premature Birth, Rate of Contractions Linked

Simple, inexpensive monitoring of uterine contractions during pregnancy can help predict and prevent the birth of premature infants, whose medical care costs the nation $2 billion annually, a new study shows.

The monitoring, done once a week beginning in the seventh month of pregnancy, identified 70% of women who gave birth to premature infants, said Dr. Michael Katz of the Children’s Hospital of San Francisco. “We can use this data to make prematurity a preventable event,” Katz said.

Until now, doctors have had few ways to identify women likely to give birth prematurely, Katz told a seminar in New York City.

The key to early identification is a device called a tocodynamometer, an instrument worn around the waist that measures contractions. In a study of 150 black, inner-city women in Philadelphia, Katz and Dr. Denise Main of Mt. Zion Hospital in San Francisco measured the women’s contractions in a doctor’s office for one hour, once a week, from the 28th to the 32nd weeks of pregnancy, Katz said. Women who had more than six contractions during an hour’s monitoring were considered at risk of premature birth, Katz said. The contractions are mostly too mild for pregnant women to feel, he said.