NCT07078786

Effect of Pre-delivery Dexamethasone in Comparison With Betamethasone on Fetal Heart Trace

Comparison of Effect of Antenatal Dexamethasone Versus Betamethasone on Antepartum Cardiactocography

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: Phase 4
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 110 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Rawalpindi Medical College · Academic / Other
• Sex: Female
• Age: —
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

As baby grows inside the womb of mother, heart and other organs develop. The heart activity can be recorded by placing a transducer on the belly of mother. The tracing obtain provides information about heart rate, any increase or decrease in heart rate and how much it varies with time. Variation in heart rate along with increase is indicator of fetal well being. Some mothers are at high risk of pre-term birth that is baby delivery before 37 weeks of gestation. In such cases steroids are given to mother to accelerate lung development of the baby so that it can easily adapt to outside world. Dexamethasone and Betamethasone are commonly used steroids which can also effect fetal heart activity.

Detailed description

Some patients are at high risk of Pre term birth and therefore they are advised antenatal steroids which facilitates fetal lung development preparing it for smoother transition for extra-uterine life. Dexamethasone and Betamethasone are commonly used for this purpose but differently effect fetal cardiac activity as evident by CTG changes and awareness of these phenomena would prevent iatrogenic delivery of preterm fetuses.

Conditions

• Cardiotocography
• Steroids

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
DRUG	Betamethason Sodium Phosphate	Intramuscular injection of Betamethasone 12mg will be administered on 2 consecutive days
DRUG	Dexamethasone	two doses of 12mg of IM Dexamethasone given 24 hours apart

Timeline

• Start date: 2025-07-13
• Primary completion: 2025-10-15
• Completion: 2025-10-15
• First posted: 2025-07-22
• Last updated: 2025-08-12

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Pakistan

Regulatory

• FDA-regulated drug study