Among pregnant women with inherited bleeding disorders, having a contraindication to regional anesthesia appears not to impact labor outcomes, according to a retrospective analysis.
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“The purpose of this study was to determine the anesthetic use in labour in a cohort of women with inherited bleeding disorders,” wrote Sean C. Boyd, of Coombe Women & Infants University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland, and colleagues. The findings were reported in the European Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology and Reproductive Biology.
The study comprised 97 pregnant women with an inherited bleeding disorder and outcomes related to 130 delivered newborns.
The researchers reviewed medical records of patients with a variety of inherited bleeding disorders: type 1 von Willebrand disease (VWD), deficiencies of factors VII, VIII, IX, X, and XI, combined deficiencies, and others.
Various clinical data, including both obstetric and anesthetic outcomes, were collected from January 2011 to December 2016.
When researchers compared pregnancies where regional anesthesia was contraindicated to those in which it was considered safe, women with a contraindication were more likely to receive general anesthesia for cesarean section (20% vs. 1%), more likely to use a remifentanil infusion (31% vs. 0), and more likely to require prophylactic hemostatic support for delivery (61% vs. 1%).
Vaginal (71% vs. 65%; P = .4) and caesarean section (29% vs. 32%; P = .28) delivery rates were similar between the two groups.
Rates of postpartum hemorrhage were greater in pregnancies where regional anesthesia was contraindicated (24% vs. 12%), but not significantly different (P = .07). No cases of vertebral canal hematoma or neonatal hemorrhage were reported among participants.
“Women are anxious about analgesia and anesthesia in labour and understandably, more so, when they are aware that they are unable to have an epidural or spinal,” the researchers wrote. “This study shows what alternative analgesia is used in labour and, reassuringly, that labour outcome is the same.”
Two key limitations of the study were the small sample size and the wide range of included bleeding disorders.
No funding sources were reported. The authors did not report conflicts of interest.
SOURCE: Boyd SC et al. Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol. 2019 Jun 3. doi: 10.1016/j.ejogrb.2019.05.043.