It's been years since the return of umbilical cord in the neck of the fetus, also called circular cord, is considered a serious complication in pregnancy.
It has often been associated with fetal distress and has even served to give causality to some complications in childbirth ("ah, of course, it had a cord return") that really depend on other factors.
That is why it is worth asking: is it a phenomenon as dangerous as we have always been told?
The umbilical cord has an average length of about 55 cm. This means that it is long enough to "bind" with the fetus. It can be wrapped in any part of the body, especially in the neck, arms, legs or the trunk of the fetus. On many occasions the return remains until the moment of delivery, but on many other occasions, with some gesture of the baby, the cord is unwound.
The reasons for this phenomenon to happen are that the cord is somewhat longer than usual or that there is more amniotic fluid and therefore more free space.
Although it may seem a rare event, the truth is that it is estimated that 30-40% of babies have a cord.
Detection is performed by ultrasound, although a large percentage (more than 30%) of both false positives and false negatives are estimated and Many times it is not detected until delivery, seeing the cord wrapped around the neck.
Now let's answer the question: Is it as dangerous as we have always been told?
Most of the time the return of the umbilical cord in the neck of the fetus does not cause any problems. The baby can be born vaginally and the solution on the back is based on putting the finger between the neck and the cord to undo the circular while the child leaves.
It is possible that the cord is tight and the loop is adjusted to the neck. The way of acting is exactly the same, release the lap at the time of delivery. If on some (rare) occasion this could not be done, because the cord is too short, the cord can be pinched and cut before the baby has just left.
Often some problems or fears are associated during dilation at the turn of the cord ("Ah look, I had an alteration of the heart rhythm because it had a return of the cord that was not visible") that are often given for other reasons such as the use of synthetic oxytocin to accelerate the delivery, which produces more frequent contractions, of greater duration and potency that many babies do not tolerate well, adopt the lithotomy posture, which is also not the most suitable for giving birth, etc.
On other occasions, if the lanyard is so tight that it presses the carotid arteries (very, very tight, which is quite strange), it could cause bradycardia in the baby and it would be necessary to assess whether there is fetal distress to choose how to continue with the delivery.
In any case, the reality is that as you can not see what happens inside, many of the actions are carried out by intuition and the cord ends up being the cause (or taking the blame) of many situations whose real cause is probably unknown or It has been generated by an excess of instrumentalization in childbirth.
(With the blame thing, I mean something like teeth when a baby of a few months is irritable: "they will be teeth" or the brother who has just been born when the elder complains about something: "he is jealous of the child") .
