Evidence synthesis from a qualitative and a quantitative systematic literature review combined with a focus group interview to identify relevant criteria for decision-making on management options for early pregnancy loss

Mirjam Peters,Andrea Icks,Charalabos Markos Dintsios

doi:10.15761/fwh.1000172

Abstract

Evidence synthesis from a qualitative and a quantitative systematic literature review combined with a focus group interview to identify relevant criteria for decision-making on management options for early pregnancy loss

Highlights

An Early Pregnancy Loss (EPL) is the natural death of an embryo or foetus and occurs in ten to twenty percent of all pregnancies
Other options are (ii) expectant management, which means waiting for the EPL to complete itself, or (iii) medical management were this process is sped up using misoprostol
This study aims to identify relevant criteria for women to make a management decision for EPL and to gather context information about women with EPL to prepare a quantitative preference elicitation

Summary

Introduction

An Early Pregnancy Loss (EPL) is the natural death of an embryo or foetus and occurs in ten to twenty percent of all pregnancies. According to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, we will use the term Early Pregnancy Loss (EPL) instead of miscarriage or Early Pregnancy Failure (EPF) to avoid the association with miss or failure [3]. This could coincidently lead to a negative association. The existing evidence is limited but does not indicate a superiority of one of the three management options They are different according to length of time until EPL is complete and in terms of invasiveness [3,4,5,6,7]

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Conclusion