14 November 2017
How long should you let a pregnancy run before being induced?
By Clare Wilson
If your pregnancy runs past its due date, how long should you wait before being induced? Evidence is building that, at least for older women, it’s safer to get the baby out on time, at 40 weeks.
This seems to be the case for first-time mums, according to a review of 80,000 women in England. Gordon Smith of the University of Cambridge and his colleagues found that when women aged 35 or older are induced at 40 weeks, only 0.08 per cent of their babies died. But in women who waited until they gave birth naturally, or who were induced at 41 to 42 weeks, this rose to 0.26 per cent.
This means that, for every 562 women who were induced at 40 weeks, one stillbirth was avoided.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/long-let-pregnancy-run-induced/
