Physiologists have shown that increased fluids improve skeletal muscle performance in prolonged exercise.Typical orders provide for 125 mL of intravenous fluids per hour in patients taking limited oral fluids during labor. Our purpose in this study was to determine whether increased intravenous fluids affect the progress of labor. In a prospective randomized institutional clinical trial, on...

There is no consensus on the optimal local anesthetic agent to initiate labor analgesia for patients in active labor. Currently used local anesthetic agents for initiating labor analgesia include 0.25% bupivacaine, 0.5% bupivacaine, 0.2% ropivacaine without or with various types and doses of opioids. All these agents are administered in incremental doses and are relatively "slow onset" in initi...

Abstract Background: Insufficient uterine activity or hypotonic uterine contraction is a common reason and the cause of abnormal labor progress that can be corrected with oxytocin. Realizing this fact that undue prolongation of labor may contribute to prenatal morbidity has resulted in using oxytocin infusion in different kinds of ineffective uterine contractions. Materials and methods: In th...

To the Editor:—I read with interest the report of epidural anesthesia in a parturient with a lumboperitoneal shunt. Paravertebral lumbar sympathetic block is another method of providing labor analgesia in patients with a history of back surgery or spine disease. The technique is well-described. The block is performed at the L1 or L2 level. This method eliminates the theoretical concern of epidu...

OBJECTIVE The study intends to identify the presence of clinical indicators of pain during labor and to correlate the verbal reference of pain intensity with uterine contractions as a proposal to validate the clinical nursing diagnosis Labor Pain. METHOD Observational study of the 22 clinical indicators that represented the defining characteristics for the diagnosis. RESULTS There were 55 p...

OBJECTIVE Postpartum hemorrhage is most common cause of maternal mortality. Active management of third stage of labor minimizes the risk of postpartum hemorrhage. To compare the effect of methylergonovine and 15-methyl prostaglandin F2α (15-methyl PGF2α) in active management of third stage of labor. METHODS A randomized open labelled parallel study with 50 women in normal labor, 25 in each gr...