Prevention of recurrent preterm delivery by 17 alpha hydroxyl progesterone caproate

ABSTRACT

Preterm delivery occurs before 37 completed weeks of gestation and it is the major determinant of infant mortality in developed countries. Preterm delivery is the factor most responsible for the relatively high infant mortality in our country. Despite many trials of reduced activity, tocolytic therapy, antibiotic therapy and other strategies for prevention, no effective and reproducible method of preventing preterm delivery has been demonstrated. One treatment that showed promise in small trials was prophylactic treatment with pro-gestational compounds. The purpose of this work is to determine the effectiveness of 17 alpha hydroxyl progesterone in prevention of preterm delivery in women who had a previous preterm birth. It was a descriptive case study and was conducted in the department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Fatima Memorial Hospital, Lahore for a period of twelve months from January 2011 to December 2011. A total of 135 cases were received by non-probability purposive sampling technique. In this study majority of the patients i.e. 46.67% [n = 63] were between 26 - 30 years, 24.44% [n = 33] were found between 22 - 25 years, whereas 28.89% [n = 39] were found between 31 - 35 years, mean age was found to be 28.24 + 3.83. Most of the patients i.e. 69.62% [n = 94] were found between 21 - 24 weeks and 30.37% [n = 41] were found between 16 - 20 weeks. Data regarding number of previous preterm deliveries showed that majority of the patients i.e. 39.25% [n = 53] were found only 1 previous preterm delivery, 27.49% [n = 29] with 3 and > 3 previous preterm births were found only in 11.86% [n = 16]. Prolongation of pregnancy beyond 36 weeks of gestation is described where 68.15% [n = 92] are shown to be delivered beyond 36 weeks and only 31.85% [n = 43] could not deliver beyond 36 weeks of gestation