Participants. This study was a retrospective cohort study. The study subjects were women undergoing the VBAC who used oxytocin to induce or accelerate labor during delivery in the Obstetrics Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University from January 2014 to May 2020. A total of 124 samples with 1,005 records with OT regulation were included in this study, among which 312 records were labeled the OT as “drip speed maintaining”, 618 as “drip speed accelerating”, and 75 as “drip speed slowing down”. They were divided into the training sets (n=804) and the test sets (n=201) at the 8:2 ratio.
The inclusion criteria were: ① using oxytocin to induce or accelerate the labor. ② the subjects and their families, who understood the advantages and risks of the VBAC and had the willingness to try vaginal labor and to provide signed informed consent. ③ the subjects who had only one cesarean section with a transverse incision in the lower segment of the uterus. ④ the subjects who had the interval between the previous cesarean section and this delivery of more than 18 months, and no indication of the cesarean section need in this pregnancy. ⑤ ultrasonography showed that the muscular layer of the lower segment of the anterior wall of the uterus was continuous. ⑥ the clinical data was complete.
The exclusion criteria were: ① the subjects who had contraindications for vaginal delivery. ② there were contraindications for OT use. ③ the subjects who used OT only in the third stage of labor. ④ the continuous intravenous infusion time was less than 30 minutes. ⑤ using drugs that affected the fetal heart rate (FHR) during delivery. ⑥ the indication of induced labor was a stillbirth. ⑦ still static OT was combined with other induction drugs.
Preliminary identification of predictors. Based on the literature review and the knowledge of a panel of experts, 18 factors that may affect the regulation of OT speed in the VBAC were selected from the electronic medical record system including age, BMI, gestational week, history of vaginal delivery, the thickness of lower uterine segment, interval time from the previous cesarean section, cervical receptivity, uterine dilatation, the position of presentation of fetus, state of the fetal membrane, uterine height, maternal abdominal circumference, analgesia used, amniotic fluid index, fetal biparietal diameter, fetal head circumference, fetal abdominal circumference, and fetal femoral length. A multiple linear regression to filter modeling variables was adopted.
Data preprocessing. The maternal and fetal conditions were evaluated by obtaining the cardiotocography (CTG) with access to the data port of the Philips EFM. The OT medication was usually assessed every 15 to 20 minutes by calculating the intrapartum variables including baseline FHR, maternal heart rate, uterine contraction frequency, duration of UCs, and the peak uterine pressure.
The FHR and maternal heart rate were output in the form of numerical variables (times/min) from the EFM, in which the average value during the time period was calculated. The average FHR during times when the baseline fluctuated within 5 beats/min took up more than 20% of the pattern (which could be discontinuous) during the assessing period. If the baseline FHR of the assessing period was uncertain, the baseline of the previous time period was substituted.
The uterine pressure signal reflected the state of the UC, which was affected by the position of the pressure probe, the thickness of abdominal subcutaneous fat, fetal movement, and the tightness of the probe fitting. Firstly, the Sym6 wavelet packet of the Matlab software was used to decompose the measured signal in 4 scales, and the profile coefficient was taken as the uterine contraction signal after denoising. Secondly, the feature of UC was extracted. The amplitude of the peak point w Firstly, the Sym6 wavelet packet of Matlab software is used to decompose the measured signal in 4 scales, and the profile coefficient is used as the uterine contraction signal after denoising.as regarded as the peak value of the uterine pressure, the ratio of unit time to peak interval was taken as the frequency of the UC, and the interval between the starting point of the UC and the endpoint of the UC was taken as the duration of the UC (Figure 2). Finally, the average value of each UC variable in this time period was calculated.
The establishment of the predictive model. The OT regulation model was constructed based on logistic regression (LR), classification and regression trees (CART), and the XGBoost algorithm. The Grid Search CV adjusted the best parameters. The core parameters of the XGBoost model were set as follows: For the Loss Function, multi: softmax, 200 as the Iteration Number, 6 as the Maximum Depth of the Tree, and 0.2 as the Learning Rate were selected. For the LR, we selected L-BFGS solver, L2 as the Cost Function, the parameter Multiclass set to Multinomial, and the Iteration Number of 200. For CART, we chose Gini to measure the purity of the spanning tree. The maximum depth of the tree was 6, and the minimum number of leaf nodes was 6.
The datasets were divided into the training set and test set in the ratio of 8:2. Under the 5-fold cross-validation, the performance of the model was evaluated for accuracy, precision, recall rate, and F1 value, and the confusion matrix was used to observe the performance of the model in each category.
Verification of the intelligent regulation model of oxytocin. The prediction by the intelligent model was compared with the manual decision by a junior midwife and the experts’ opinions to test the predictive effect of the model. Ten samples were selected, and the OT was adjusted 10 times for each sample. The junior midwife has worked for less than 5 years with the junior professional title, and she independently judged the FHR, the UC, and other conditions to implement the OT drip rate control.
The decision from the 2 senior experts with the professional title of Deputy Chief Nurse or above was taken as the gold standard. If the experts’ decisions were inconsistent, the final decision was taken after a consensus formed following the discussion. The correct rate (%) was calculated in comparing the junior midwife’s adjustment and the prediction of the intelligent model with the experts’ decision.
Statistical analysis. The SPSS vs. 22.0 was used for the data analysis. The linear regression was formed between the electronic medical record data and the dose of the OT. The continuous variables with the normal distribution are presented as Mean±SD, and the variables with the skewed distribution are presented as the Median (P25, P75). The categorized variables are presented as frequency and percentage (%). According to the results from the univariate linear regression analysis, the variables with P < 0.1 were included in the multiple linear regression model, and the stepwise regression method was used to screen the variables, with the 2-sided test. The P < 0.05 was considered significant. The PyTorch framework based on the Python platform was established and validated for the different types of machine learning algorithms.
Ethical approval of the study protocol. This study has been reviewed by the Ethics Committee of Wenzhou Medical University (No. 2019089). As this study was a retrospective study, the data were all from the electronic medical record system, it was approved by the Ethics Committee of Wenzhou Medical University, and informed consent was exempted. We confirm that all methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.