Induction of labour versus expectant management in women with preterm prelabour rupture of membranes

Background: Preterm prelabour rupture of the membranes (PPROM) is an important clinical problem and a dilemma for the gynaecologist. On the one hand, awaiting spontaneous labour increases the probability of infectious disease for both mother and child, whereas on the other hand induction of labour leads to preterm birth with an increase in neonatal morbidity (e.g., respiratory distress syndrome (RDS)) and a possible rise in the number of instrumental deliveries. Methods/Design: We aim to determine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of immediate delivery after PPROM in near term gestation compared to expectant management. Pregnant Published: 6 July 2007 BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 2007, 7:11 doi:10.1186/1471-2393-7-11 Received: 29 March 2007 Accepted: 6 July 2007 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/7/11 © 2007 van der Ham et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.