ANR IFCON

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During labor period, the infant makes the critical transition from its dependence on maternal and placental support, oxidative, nutritional, and endocrinologic, and establishes independent life. The difficulty of this transition is indicated by mortality risks that are higher than any occurring until old age (Kung et al, 2008) and by risks for damage to organ systems, most notably the brain that can be lifelong. During labor period, fetus has risk of severe hypoxia and metabolic acidosis. To prevent fetal cerebral hypoxia, there is an urgent need to develop methods to accurately and rapidly recognize oxygen delivery and tissue hypoxia in the critically labor situation. Near Inra-Red Spectroscopy (NIRS) has allowed for continuous monitoring of oxygenation of cerebral tissues, because of its noninvasive, compact, portable nature, and potential to measure tissue oxygenation in the brain. The challenge is to adapt this optical measure to critical situation like labor combined with simultaneous Electroencepholgraphy (EEG) during delivery; this new approach provides the opportunity to evaluate continuously, more specifically and simultaneously the Intrapartum Fetal Cerebral Oximetry and the Neuronal Activity thanks to the IFCON device to better address and prevent the cortical hypoxia and its neuronal consequences during the perpartum. 

There is a compelling need for a specific, accurate, easy to interpret, and easy to use method to monitor the fetus in labor. We propose a new approach that combines NIRS and EEG measurements to determine precisely early cerebral hypoxia/anoxia concomitantly to its cortical neuronal consequences during labor. This is done in order to diagnose with elevated sensibility and specificity hypoxia/anoxia fetal risk so as to avoid neuronal complications.