Continuation versus discontinuation of intravenous oxytocin in the active phase of labour.

What It Covers

Researchers studied Oxytocin in this meta-analysis publication.

To assess the effects of the discontinuation of intravenous oxytocin stimulation in pregnant women during the active phase of induced or augmented labour.

During the study selection process, the researchers placed 10 studies in the 'awaiting classification' category because the researchers needed additional information to assess eligibility or trial trustworthiness.

Why It Was Studied

Intravenous oxytocin is widely used to induce labour or to augment labour (i.e. enhance contractions to promote progression), with approximately one-quarter of pregnant women at term receiving the medication.

However, evidence from randomised trials is conflicting, and optimal management is unclear.

Who the Included Studies Covered

PubMed tags the participants as women only.

For their primary analysis, the researchers used the fixed-effect model, implemented using the Mantel-Haenszel method for dichotomous outcomes and inverse variance for continuous outcomes.

How the Review Was Done

The researchers searched the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), PubMed, Embase, Scopus, and Web of Science Core Collection, as well as ClinicalTrials.gov and the WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform.

The researchers also screened reference lists of included studies and relevant reviews, and contacted trial authors for additional data.

No language or date restrictions were applied.

The last search was conducted on 17 November 2025.

The researchers prespecified random-effects meta-analysis as a secondary analysis to explore the robustness of the findings in the presence of between-study heterogeneity.

What Was Measured

The researchers conducted sensitivity and subgroup analyses for the critical outcome only.

The researchers assessed statistical heterogeneity using Tau², I² and Chi² statistics.

The subject headings attached to it are Oxytocin, Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic, Oxytocics, Labor, Induced and Cesarean Section.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a meta-analysis of Oxytocin.

Results are reported in around 13 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2026 (The Cochrane database of systematic reviews), a journal based in England.

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