Intramuscular oxytocin versus intravenous oxytocin to prevent postpartum haemorrhage at vaginal delivery (LabOR trial): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Oxytocin, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Primary postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) is one of the leading causes of maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide.

The most common cause of primary PPH is uterine atony.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 1000 women were involved.

PubMed tags the participants as women only.

The study will recruit 1000 women at term (>36 weeks) with singleton pregnancies who are aiming for a vaginal delivery.

How the Study Was Run

The design is described as randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled and pilot.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got Oxytocin and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Blinding on both sides kept the women and researchers unaware of who received Oxytocin.

A placebo (an inactive look-alike) gave the Oxytocin group a baseline to be compared against.

It is described as a pilot, a small early test of whether a larger Oxytocin study would be practical.

A double-blind randomised controlled trial is planned.

What Was Measured

Primary postpartum haemorrhage (PPH) is one of the leading causes of maternal morbidity and mortality worldwide.

The most common cause of primary PPH is uterine atony.

The subject headings attached to it are Clinical Protocols, Delivery, Obstetric, Labor Stage, Third, Oxytocics, Oxytocin, Postpartum Hemorrhage and Uterine Contraction.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Active management third stage of labour, Intramuscular oxytocin, Intravenous oxytocin, Postpartum haemorrhage and Randomised controlled trial.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study of Oxytocin in 1000 women.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Results are reported in around 2 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2017 (Trials), a journal based in England.

More context: the Oxytocin compound page, all human trials.