Reducing neonatal morbidity by discontinuing oxytocin during the active phase of first stage of labor: a multicenter randomized controlled trial STOPOXY

What Was Tested

This randomized controlled trial paper looks at Oxytocin.

Thus, the researchers aim at evaluating the impact of discontinuing oxytocin during the active phase of the first stage of labor on the neonatal morbidity rate.

Why It Was Studied

Clinical trials NCT03991091 , registered June 19th, 2019.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 2475 women were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were young adults and adults, women only.

The first participant was recruited January 17th 2020.

The trial includes women with a live term (≥37 weeks) singleton, in cephalic presentation, receiving oxytocin before 4 cm, after an induced or spontaneous labor.

How the Study Was Run

In design terms this was a randomized, open-label and multicenter study.

Because people in this Oxytocin study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Nothing was hidden in this open-label Oxytocin study: the women and staff both knew the treatment.

More than one site took part, so the women came from several places.

STOPOXY is a multicenter, randomized, open-label, controlled trial conducted in 20 maternity units in France.

Women aged < 18 years, with a lack of social security coverage, a scarred uterus, a multiple pregnancy, a fetal congenital malformation, a growth retardation <3rd percentile or an abnormal fetal heart rate at randomization are excluded.

Women are randomized before 6 cm when oxytocin is either continued or discontinued.

Randomization is stratified by center and parity.

The primary outcome will be compared between the two groups using a chi-square test with a p-value of 0.05.

What Was Measured

Secondary outcomes include neonatal complications, duration of active phase, mode of delivery, fetal and maternal complications during labor and delivery, including cesarean delivery rate and postpartum hemorrhage, and birth experience.

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Acidosis, Apgar Score, Fetal Blood, France, Heart Rate, Fetal, Hydrogen-Ion Concentration and Labor, Induced.

The authors tagged it with the keywords Birth experience, Cesarean delivery, Discontinuation, Labor duration, Neonatal morbidity and Oxytocin.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, open-label and multicenter study of Oxytocin in 2475 women.

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

Its findings take up roughly 1 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2020 (BMC pregnancy and childbirth), a journal based in England.

More context: the Oxytocin compound page.