NCT02599610

Effects of Digital Vaginal Examination During Labor on Pain and Anxiety Levels

Effects of Digital Vaginal Examination During Labor on Pain and Anxiety : a Randomised Controlled Trial

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 40 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Ankara University · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Digital vaginal examination is the most common method for assessing progress of labor and delivery. Considering it is the most common intervention women receive during course of labor, evidence for psychological effects of digital vaginal examination on women is surprisingly sparse. Reducing the number of vaginal examination during labor has been proposed by many authors as benefit of more vaginal examination is unclear. However this is unlikely to happen until more research on the topic demonstrates clear detrimental effects of vaginal examination. Our study is aimed at investigating association of vaginal examination with psychological distress of women during labor. Anxiety during labor is associated with longer labor duration, increased perception of pain, problems with newborn attachment, and increased rates of postpartum depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. In this study, women were assigned to either digital vaginal examination or transperineal ultrasound assessment groups were compared to each other in a randomised controlled setting.

Conditions

• Pregnancy
• Obstetric Labor

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Digital vaginal examination	Patients will be subject to digital vaginal examinations every four hours during latent phase of first stage, hourly during active phase of first stage and as needed during second stage.
DEVICE	Transperineal ultrasound examination	Patients will be subject to transperineal ultrasound examinations every four hours during latent phase of first stage, hourly during active phase of first stage and as needed during second stage.

Timeline

• Start date: 2015-10-01
• Primary completion: 2016-03-01
• Completion: 2016-03-01
• First posted: 2015-11-06
• Last updated: 2016-02-17

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Turkey (Türkiye)