Objective: The purpose of the cur-rent study was to investigate the role of umbilical vein injection of oxyto-cin compared to saline in the treat-ment of retained placenta.
Setting: Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, Benha University Hos-pital.
Design: A Double-blind Random-ized Placebo-controlled Clinical Tri-al
Materials and methods: Retained pla-centa was reported in 69 cases out of 5858 vaginal deliveries (1.2 %). Sixty women fulfilling the inclusion crite-ria were included in this study and scheduled randomly into two equal groups. Study (Oxytocin) group (n=30) received intraumbilical vein injection of 20 I.U. Oxytocin diluted in 20 ml normal saline and placebo-control group received intraumbili-cal vein injection of 20 ml normal saline.
Results: There were higher rate of spontaneous expulsion of the retained placenta (46.7% vs. 13.3%; p=0.0087), less need for manual removal of the placenta (53.3%) vs. 86.7%; p=0.0087), less blood loss after in-traumbilical vein injection in both groups (200± 26.45mL vs. 200± 26.45mL respectively; p < 0.0001), less need of blood transfusion, shorter in-jection to expulsion interval, higher hemoglobin level 24 – 48 hours later in favor of oxytocin group compared to Saline group (10.06 ± 0.94 gm/dl vs. 9.63 ± 0.44 gm/dl; p = 0.0270 respec-tively) and the differences were statis-tically significant. However, the differ-ence between both groups was not sig-nificant regarding the duration of 1st & 2nd stages of labor and the number of women took oxytocin in the 1st stage of labor and the type of vagi-nal delivery, the occurrence of in-fection, average blood loss during labor and the duration of hospital stay.
Conclusion: The intraumbilical vein injection of oxytocin is a simple, easy, less invasive and effective choice for treatment of retained placenta.