Can transvaginal cervical length and cervical strain elastography predict mid-trimester medical induction to abortion intervals?: The European Journal of Contraception & Reproductive Health Care: Vol 0, No 0
Abstract
Purpose
Mid-trimester pregnancy terminations are becoming a common practice in obstetrics. Accurate prediction of the delay from induction to abortion can help in planning the optimal time for the medical induction process and optimizing the use of health care services. Therefore, we aimed to assess whether transvaginal cervical length and cervical elastography could predict the time interval from medical induction to abortion in cases of medically indicated mid-trimester termination of pregnancy.
Materials and methods
We conducted a prospective observational pilot study between January 2022 and October 2022 in patients who underwent medically indicated mid-trimester termination of pregnancy with a non-dilated cervix for fetal morphological, chromosomal abnormalities or preterm premature rupture of membranes. Cervical length (CL) and cervical strain ratio (CSR) were measured by transvaginal sonography. The predictive value of CL and CSR in the induction to abortion interval was calculated after medical induction with misoprostol.
Results
Fifty-three eligible pregnant women were evaluated. The mean gestational age at abortion was 17.61 ± 2.81 weeks. The mean time interval from induction to abortion was 31.72 ± 16.57 h. In multivariate linear regression analysis, CL and history of previous vaginal delivery were the significant independent predictors of induction at abortion interval (all p<0.01), with no additional significant contribution from CSR.
Conclusion
Transvaginal CSR is unlikely to be useful in predicting induction between mid-trimester abortion and medically indicated termination of pregnancy.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflicts of interest are reported by the author(s).
Ethical approval
The study complies with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the study protocol was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University (Reference:2022-KAE-0025). Written informed consent was obtained from all participants.
Author contributions
All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Secil Karaca Kurtulmus: Data collection and manuscript writing.
Mustafa Sengul: Conceived and designed the analysis.
Ibrahim Omeroglu: Data analysis.
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