Cheyne 2003.

Methods	Study design: RCT. Duration of study: 1999.
Participants	Setting: Glasgow Royal Maternity Hospital, Scotland. Inclusion criteria: healthy women who had experienced a normal pregnancy, presented at term in spontaneous labour and were eligible for admission to the Midwives Birth Unit. Exclusion criteria: women with risk factors. Participants randomised: 334 women (157 admission CTG (referred to as 'control group' in paper), 177 intermittent auscultation (referred to as 'study group' in paper)). Randomisation on admission in labour.
Interventions	Admission CTG: a routine 20‐minute period of EFM at the time of admission. Intermittent auscultation: the fetal heart was auscultated during and immediately following a contraction for a minimum of 60 seconds.
Outcomes	Outcomes considered in the review and reported in or extracted from the study: caesarean section; instrumental vaginal birth; continuous EFM during labour; amniotomy; oxytocin for augmentation of labour; epidural; fetal blood sampling; fetal and neonatal deaths; Apgar score < 7 at or after 5 minutes; admission to neonatal intensive care.
Notes	Unpublished data to permit re‐inclusion of women to groups as randomised kindly provided by author. This study was funded by North Glasgow University Hospitals NHS Trust. Declaration of interest were not mentioned in the trial.
Risk of bias
Bias	Authors' judgement	Support for judgement
Random sequence generation (selection bias)	Low risk	"...computer‐generated in order to allocate participants equally between the two groups..."
Allocation concealment (selection bias)	Low risk	"...sequentially numbered, sealed opaque envelopes, which contained allocation to the appropriate group."
Blinding of participants and personnel (performance bias) All outcomes	High risk	Although not documented, we judged, given nature of intervention, that women and clinicians were not blind to the interventions used.
Blinding of outcome assessment (detection bias) All outcomes	High risk	Not blinded.
Incomplete outcome data (attrition bias) All outcomes	Low risk	Loss to follow‐up: in the trial report 22 women (7%) are excluded from the analysis (21 women entered into the study and found not to be in labour and 1 randomisation card missing). However, data for these 21 of 22 women were identified and extracted subsequently by the trial author and kindly provided to the review team.
Selective reporting (reporting bias)	Low risk	All outcomes stated in the methods section were reported adequately in results.
Other bias	Low risk	None identified.