Twenty-five years after the FIGO guidelines for the use of fetal monitoring: time for a simplified approach?

Abstract

Twenty-five years after the FIGO Workshop that produced the "Guidelines for the use of fetal monitoring," these remain the only broad international consensus effort in this field. Documents of a similar nature have been produced by national institutions, with subsequent updates of the initial concepts. The 3-class classification system has now been adopted by all the major guidelines, and while there are numerous similar features, and indeed many ideas were inspired by the FIGO guidelines, many key aspects still lack consensus. Making guidelines simpler and more objective may be an important step to guarantee a wide application and assimilation of the recommendations, as well as an enhanced reproducibility and increased memory retention.