Abstract

Perinatal mortality is a good indicator to assess the quality of intrapartum health care system. Ultimate goal of antepartum and intrapartum health care services is achieving a satisfactory perinatal outcome. An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted among 423 pregnant women who were admitted for delivery at the labour room, Teaching Hospital Jaffna. Term singleton pregnancies with cephalic presentation were included. Mothers with medical disorders, complicated pregnancies, previous history of antepartum hemorrhages and past sections were excluded. Interviewer administered structured data collection sheet was applied for data collection. Mean age of the study participants was 27.97 years (SD=5.72 years). Foetal heart rate abnormalities were not detected among 63.3% of the study participants (N=269). Pinard foetal stethoscope was used first to detect abnormalities of 17.9% (N=28) of the participants with foetal abnormalities. Handled Doppler machine was used to detect first foetal abnormalities in 28.2% of the study participants (N=44). In 84 participants (53.8%) foetal abnormalities were detected at the first time by both methods. Significantly higher percentage of participants were detected by the handled Doppler machine than the pinard foetal stethoscope (z=2.159:p