Although 80 to 90% of all dead fetuses may be spontaneously eliminated after two to three weeks from death, labor induction has been the mostly used management. The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the results of labor induction for pregnancies with fetal death and gestation age above 20 weeks. It was a descriptive clinical study which was performed at the Hospital e Maternidade Leonor Mendes de Barros in São Paulo, Brazil. One hundred and twenty-two pregnancies with fetal death were evaluated regarding their social and demographic characteristics, causes of fetal death, previous pregnancies history and delivery (induction, route, complications). The statistical procedures used were estimation of mean and standard deviation and chi². The main causes of fetal death were hypertension and infections. The mostly used drug for labor induction was misoprostol (37.7%) followed by oxytocin (19.7%), while 27% of cases had spontaneous onset of labor. The mean time of induction was 3 hours. The majority of women had vaginal delivery and cesarean section was performed in 9.1% of them. It is concluded that labor induction for fetal death is safe and efficient, irrespective of the method used. Misoprostol when used in the vagina is specially useful for cases with an unripe cervix because of the modifying effect of the drug on the cervix.
Fetal death; Labor; Oxytocin; Prostaglandin
