Vaginal Misoprostol Administration for Cervical Ripening and Labor Induction

Purpose: favorable cervix and uterine contraction are two basic factors in delivery and are important to success in labor induction.Different treatments are used for laborinduction that one of them is misoprostol. Because of the importance of the subject and the lack of a similar study in Iran, the purpose of this study isto compare the effect of sublingual and vaginal misoprostolin theinduction of labor in term patients. Methodology: This is a double-blind randomized clinical trial. 270 pregnant women in oneof thehospitals of Tehran during the years 2012 and 2013 were randomly divided into two groups. One group received 27mg vaginal misoprostol and oral placebo and other group received 27mg oral misoprostol and vaginal placebo. The embryonic and maternal complications and theBishop score, and the time of onset of pain and time interval between pain anddeliverywere evaluated in two groups. Results:the mean of bishop score before and after misoprostol and the time of onset of pain and its interval until delivery and the number of doses of misoprostol were not different in the two groups (p>0.05). 60 women(6.34 %)had anatural childbirthin the sublingual method and 72 women (53.2 %) had anatural childbirth in the vaginal method, which did not show thestatistically significant difference. Also, the frequency of maternal and fetal complications was similar in the two groups (p>0.05).There is no difference between sublingual and vaginal misoprostol from the aspect of results of pregnancy and fetal and maternal complications