Fetal Heart Rate Response to Hypoxia in the Subhuman Primate

Abstract

Study of fetal heart rate response to hypoxia in the subhuman primate has particular applicability to the clinical situation in the human. Most studies have been carried out in the fetal rhesus monkey, which has a hemochorial placenta, a uterus similar in configuration to the human uterus, and a growth rate almost identical to that of the human fetus. The fetal brain, our major concern during hypoxia, constitutes about 12% of birth weight in the rhesus monkey and in man compared with 1.3% in the lamb (Dawes 1968). Accordingly, about 16% of cardiac output in the near term fetal monkey supplies the brain under normoxemic conditions (Behrman et al. 1970) compared with 3% in the fetal lamb (Cohn et al. 1974).