Maternal Arrhythmias of Normal Labor and Delivery

Abstract

Labor and delivery are associated with significant hemodynamic changes, as well as pain and anxiety, all of which could be fertile ground for arrhythmias. In order to establish whether cardiac arrhythmias occur more frequently during labor and delivery in healthy parturients and whether it clinically affects the mother or the newborn, 100 pregnant women admitted for delivery had Holter monitoring before, during, and up to 1 h postpartum. Our results show that, excluding sinus rhythm variations, only a slight majority of the study subjects had arrhythmia at all, while only 2% had more complex arrhythmias, none of which required any therapeutic intervention. We conclude that cardiac arrhythmias occurring during labor, delivery, and postpartum in the healthy parturient are no more frequent than in the general female population of the same age and are without clinical consequences for the mother and the newborn.