Intramuscular Oxytocics: A Randomised Control Trial

• Status: Completed
• Trial end date: 2018-10-30
• Target enrollment: 0
• Participant gender: Female

Summary

A quarter of all pregnancy and child-birth related deaths are due to excessive bleeding after the birth, "post-partum haemorrhage" (PPH). In the UK, PPH affects approx 10% of new mothers. PPH can be frightening for women and cause them to need additional treatments prolonging their hospital stay.

Commonly PPH is caused by an inadequately contracted womb after childbirth. Giving the mother an injection of "uterotonic" medicine following the birth of their baby can prevent this. It reduces the risk of PPH by 66%.

In the UK, the two medicines most commonly used are Syntocinon and Syntometrine. Syntometrine is longer acting, but a published review of trials concluded that Syntometrine is no better at preventing severe blood loss. Syntometrine is associated with more side effects including nausea, vomiting, and high blood pressure, and has been linked with rare, but fatal, cases of stroke. All guidelines therefore recommend Syntocinon for preventing PPH.Following a telephone survey of all maternity units in the UK, 71.4% of units still routinely use Syntometrine.

Carbetocin is a newer medicine, already widely used after caesarean section, but not yet after vaginal birth. Other studies have shown that Carbetocin is slightly better at preventing bleeding after birth when compared to Syntometrine, has fewer side effects than Syntometrine, and that it may be just as good as Syntocinon at preventing PPH. No studies have directly compared all three medicines or compared their overall cost; information vital to the NHS.

Investigators propose a trial of 5712 women over 13 months, in four maternity units to compare the effectiveness, side effects and cost of Syntocinon, Syntometrine and Carbetocin, for women having a vaginal birth.

Women will be randomly allocated to receive one of these drugs. Women and staff will not know which drug they receive. Staff will collect data such as the number of extra drugs and treatments needed and the volume of blood lost. Women will be asked to complete a side effects questionnaire. Investigators will perform an analysis of cost effectiveness once all results are available.

Aim: To directly compare the effectiveness, side effects and cost of Syntocinon, Syntometrine and Carbetocin given intramuscularly to prevent PPH in the 3rd stage of labour.

• Phase: Phase 3
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers?: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Details

• Lead Sponsor: North Bristol NHS Trust
• Collaborators: Ferring Pharmaceuticals; Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Trust; University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust; University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust; University of Bristol; University of the West of England
• Treatments: Carbetocin; Ergonovine; Oxytocics; Oxytocin; Syntometrine

Criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

• ≥18 years of age at time of delivery

• Singleton pregnancy

• Vaginal birth (spontaneous and instrumental)

• >24 weeks gestation

Exclusion Criteria:

• Significant APH (>50ml) or suspected or proven placenta abruption

• Maternal coagulation disorder

• Intrauterine fetal death

• Patients who would decline blood products if required

• Known or suspected hypertensive disorders, including pre-eclampsia, pregnancy induced hypertension, essential hypertension (even if blood pressure well controlled)

• Hypertension in labour, or patients who have not had their blood pressure checked in labour

• Patients with peripheral, hepatic or cardiac disease

• Patients with an allergy or hypersensitivity to any of the active ingredients in Carbetocin, Syntometrine or Syntocinon

• Epilepsy