Saturday, February 23, 2008

Induced Labor

A recent article has been making the rounds through various blogs and newsletter and I wanted to call your attention to it as well--Avoiding Induced Labor is More Beneficial to Moms and Babies, an article posted to Medical News Today and sent as a press release from Lamaze International.

Also in regard to induced labors we received a call to action from the Tatia Oden French Foundation regarding the continued off label use of Cytotec (Misoprostol) to induce labor despite documented deaths related to its use as a method of induction.

From the call to action:

"In Sept of 2007, through the Freedom of Information Act, the Tatia Oden French Memorial Foundation requested the FDA to supply the Medwatch Forms they received for the time period Jan. 2001 through Sept. 2007, dealing with the adverse events occurring from the use of Cytotec. We received a file containing 1746 records of adverse events. Three hundred and fifty (350), 20% of these adverse events were the result of cytotec being used to induce labor."

A letter from Searle (the manufacturer of Cytotec), was sent to over 200,000 physicians in August of 2000, but as the Medwatch forms show, off label use has persisted.


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