Discussion
hypoxia
HYPOXIA
In this study, maternal blood lactate was found to be a poor predictor of both perinatal mortality at seven days postnatal. On the other hand, umbilical cord lactate was a good predictor of perinatal mortality at seven days postnatal. This finding is not surprising because the process of labour is characterized by intermittent periods of hypoxia of variable duration, characterized by anaerobic breakdown of glucose in the myometrial cells [We therefore recommend further studies to explore the possibility of measuring lactate from other samples such as amniotic fluid that can be easily collected during labour.Our study found a much higher cutoff value (15.5mmol/L) for umbilical arterial lactate compared to other studies whose cutoffs ranged between 3.75 and 8 mmol/L [