Telemetric transmission of fetal cardiac rhythm using a fetal electro-cardiographic signal which has been picked up from the mother's abdomen made it possible to monitor the fetus from a distance in 44 patients. This method of investigation, which is very demanding on the team, should be reserved for high-risk fetal cases. It makes it possible in some cases to pick up an early diagnosis of acute fetal distress, outside the times that are usually given for observations of fetal monitoring, namely multiples of ten minutes. The limitations in this technique are not to be found in the method of transmission itself, which does seem to be fairly easy to achieve successfully, but in the quality of the electro-cardiographic signals received from the abdominal wall, which are unreliable.