It's value as a monitoring device is based on its great sensitivity. The causation defense of birth-injury cases has evolved over the years and is, in fact, constantly changing. Whereas, once the causation defense was restricted primarily to the type of the injury produced and the condition of the baby at the time of birth, today the defense touts a variety of theories that purportedly enables their experts to not only accurately predict the time when a birth injury occurred, but to always find that time for preventing injury by medical intervention is essentially non-existent. The window of time during which intervention might help is always before or after any defendant had any possible opportunity to act. These disguises are based on defense experts' claims as to either the mechanism of injury or the timing of injury.
Legitimate defenses exist within the mechanism of injury defense.
For example, a completed embolic stroke occurring in utero is a rare but unheralded event and the injuries caused by it are not preventable. This, in my view, is an illegitimate claim. The scientific evidence for brain injuries resulting from an infection in the amnion is limited. It is important to be aware, however, that authors such as Grether and Nelson, have claimed in the literature that chorioamnionitis is a risk factor for neonatal outcomes commonly attributed to birth asphyxia. Fortunately, in August of 1999, a massive retrospective cohort study published out of the University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, Texas, provides strong evidence to the contrary.