Intravaginal misoprostol versus Foley catheter for labour induction: a meta-analysis.

There are a number of agents used for cervical ripening prior to the induction of labour. Two commonly used agents are intravaginal misoprostol and a transcervical Foley catheter. To review the evidence comparing misoprostol and transcervical Foley catheter placement for induction of labour, and perform a meta-analysis comparing these two induction agents. We conducted database searches of PubMed, Embase, the Cochrane Library Database, and the ClinicalTrials.gov website. Bibliographies of all relevant articles were reviewed. Prospective, randomised trials comparing the use of intravaginal misoprostol and transcervical Foley catheter for the purpose of cervical ripening and induction of labour were included. We excluded studies in which the patients in these two intervention groups also received other induction agents concurrently, such as oral misoprostol, oxytocin, or other prostaglandins. The primary outcomes selected were time to delivery, and the rates of caesarean section, uterine tachysystole, and chorioamnionitis. Random-effects generalised linear models with a poisson distribution and log link function were used to compare the two induction agents across the studies. Nine studies (1603 patients) were identified as eligible to be included in this meta-analysis. There were no significant differences in the mean time to delivery (mean difference 1.08 ± 2.19 hours shorter for misoprostol, P = 0.2348), the rate of caesarean delivery (RR 0.991; 95% CI 0.768, 1.278), or in the rate of chorioamnionitis (RR 1.130; 95% CI 0.611, 2.089) between women who received misoprostol compared with transcervical Foley catheter. Patients who received misoprostol had significantly higher rates of tachysystole compared with women who received a transcervical Foley catheter (RR 2.844; 95% CI 1.392, 5.812). Intravaginal misoprostol and transcervical Foley catheter have similar effectiveness as induction agents. Transcervical Foley catheter is associated with a lower incidence of tachysystole. © 2011 The Authors BJOG An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology © 2011 RCOG.