OBJECTIVE: To use contemporary labor data to examine the labor patterns in a large,
modern obstetric population in the United States. METHODS: Data were from the
Consortium on Safe Labor, a multicenter retrospective study that abstracted detailed labor
and delivery information from electronic medical records in 19 hospitals across the United
States. A total of 62,415 parturients were selected who had a singleton term gestation,
spontaneous onset of labor, vertex presentation, vaginal delivery, and a normal perinatal …

Abstract Concepts developed several decades ago established criteria that defined labor
arrest as no appreciable change in cervical dilation in the presence of adequate uterine
contractions for more than 2 hours. However, these criteria may no longer be applicable to
contemporary obstetric populations.