Comparison of cervical ripening with and without nitroglycerin before first trimester discharge abortion

Abortion means termination of pregnancy in any way before fetal viability. One type of abortion is missed abortion. In this case, termination of pregnancy is performed through medical or surgical methods. Surgery is an invasive procedure with many side effects. To reduce the side effects, different methods are used to ripen (prepare) the cervix before discharge abortion; one of these methods is the use of nitroglycerin. Therefore, this study was performed to compare cervical ripening with and without nitroglycerin before first trimester discharge abortion.
This randomized clinical trial was performed on 100 patients visiting the maternity ward of Ali ibn Abi Talib Hospital of Zahedan who were candidates for first trimester discharge abortion in 2015. The patients were randomly divided into two groups of placebo and nitroglycerin. Cervical ripening was measured by vaginal dilatators in the operating room and compared between the groups. To analyze the data, t-test, Chi-square test, and Mann-Whitney U test were run in SPSS, version 11.5. P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
According to the results of this study, mean blood pressure was not significantly different between the two groups of vaginal nitroglycerin and placebo (P=0.86). However, a significant difference was observed between the two groups in terms of mean Bishop Score and mean of first needed dilatator (P The findings of this study showed that use of vaginal nitroglycerin is effective in cervical ripening before surgical termination of pregnancy.