Physical, Mental and Motor Development of Children Born to Mothers Treated With Pessary or Progesterone Supplement for Preventing Preterm Birth
Physical, Mental and Motor Development of Children Born to Mothers Treated With Pessary or Progesterone Supplement for Preventing Preterm Birth
To give strong recommendations on the efficacy and safety of vaginal progesterone versus cervical cerclage, we conduct this study to investigate the physical and mental development of children from vaginal progesterone versus cervical cerclage. Based on our research (Dang et al., 2019), the twin pregnancies with cervical lengths less than 38mm were randomly assigned to receive vaginal progesterone or cervical cerclage, which leads to the similarity in characteristics of these two groups. Hence, the result of analyzing these offsprings would be preciously valuable.
Preterm birth (PB) is the leading cause of neonatal morbidity and mortality. Twin pregnancies and short cervical length are two high-risk factors of PB. Generally, in singleton pregnancies with short cervical length below 25 mm, or with a history of preterm birth, preventive measures of PB are vaginal progesterone and cervical cerclage. The cervical pessary is also being investigated for effectiveness in PB prevention in different populations. However, the effective preventive methods for PB has not been identified up to now in twin pregnancies with short cervical length.
In our research, the results showed that the preterm birth rate before 34 weeks in the cervical pessary group was lower than the progesterone group (16% vs 22%, RR 0.73; 95% CI 0.46 - 1.18). The perinatal outcomes were also better in the cervical pessary group than in the progesterone group (19% vs 27%, RR 0.70; 95% CI 0.43 - 0.93). The cost of the cervical pessary method was also significantly lower than the vaginal progesterone method cost. Pessary insertion was also more convenient since it was only inserted once during pregnancy, compared to daily vaginal progesterone. Therefore, the cervical pessary may be an appropriate option for preventing preterm birth in twin pregnancies with a short cervix.
However, besides these short-term outcomes, we need to pay more attention to the longer-term issues of both mothers and infants. Some evidence up to now has demonstrated that both these two methods are safe with no impact on physical, mental, and motor development of children up to 3 years old and even in older children. However, such evidence is still rare. Also, there hasn't been any study evaluating the impact, if any, of these two PB preventive methods.
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