Efficacy of misoprostol alone for second trimester termination

Abstract

Misoprostol is a synthetic prostaglandin E1 analog that is initially used for the prevention of peptic and gastric ulcers and now an important drug for women’s reproductive health. The main objective is to find out the efficacy and safety of misoprostol in the second trimester to reduce the induction – abortion interval considerably with the lowest possible posology and reduced adverse reactions. A total of 30 patients were enrolled for second trimester termination for various reasons including anomalous baby, contraceptive failures. All the subjects were received a single dose of misoprostol whose posology ranged from 400 to 2000µg intravaginally and was monitored to assess the outcome measures and side effects. Successful termination was possible to all the cases but induction to expulsion time varied from 4 to 21 hours and the maximum termination cases were between 14 and 16 hours (10 cases/ 33.3%). Only six subjects were experienced with side effects like fever, shivering, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea. As a conclusion, due to lesser side effects, non-surgical termination, lesser anxiety and reduced days of hospital stay, misoprostol at single drug is a safe, cost effective and high efficacious drug for second trimester termination.