Comparison of Misoprostol versus Dinoprostone for delivery induction among pregnant women without concomitant disease

Objectives: Induction of labour is a part of an active prenatal care nowadays and the ideal method of that procedure still remains to be identified. The purpose of this study was to evaluate effectiveness of misoprostol vaginal insert as compared to dinoprostone gel for delivery induction in pregnant women without any comorbidities. Material and methods: It was a retrospective cohort study of 240 pregnant women. The primary study outcome was successful delivery. Other analysed parameters included time to delivery of a baby, time to the beginning of the first stage of labour, time to vaginal delivery, and duration of all delivery stages. We compared both methods regarding maternal complications during and after delivery. We also reviewed neonatal outcomes such as birth weight, birth length and 1-minute Apgar scores. Results: The patients' basic characteristics were similar regarding their age, gravidity, parity, height, weight and Bishop score. Time to any delivery and to the onset of a labour in the misoprostol group versus in the dinoprostone group was 14.5 vs 35.6 h (p < 0.001) and 9.9 h vs 25.3 h (p < 0.001) respectively. The chance of the beginning of labour and the baby's delivery over time has been observed to be approximately two times higher for misoprostol as compared to dinoprostone. Conclusions: Our study showed that using misoprostol vaginal insert in comparison to dinoprostone seems to shorten the time to beginning of the first stage of labour as well as the time to the delivery itself. Some lower Apgar scores observed in the misoprostol group requires further investigation.