A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Trial of Epidural Morphine Analgesia After Vaginal Delivery
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Pain after vaginal delivery can interfere with the activities of daily living. We hypothesized that epidural medication administered after delivery would be of benefit for acute postpartum pain management. The objective of this study was to assess whether epidural morphine after vaginal delivery would reduce the analgesic requirements for perineal pain. METHODS: This randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial included 228 parturients who received epidural morphine, 2.5 mg, or epidural saline within 1 h of delivery. The primary outcome was the proportion of women who received additional analgesics in the first 24 h postpartum. We also evaluated the time to first request for analgesia, pain and satisfaction scores, and the incidence of side effects due to epidural morphine. RESULTS: The majority of the 228 women participating in the study were Caucasian, primiparous patients >30 yr old. The proportion of women requiring additional analgesics was less among those who received epidural morphine (8 of 113; 7%) compared with saline (37 of 115; 32%), regardless of the degree of perineal trauma (RR = 0.22, 95% CI: 0.12-0.41). The relative risk reduction in receiving additional analgesics for primiparous patients receiving epidural morphine compared with saline was 0.25 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.13-0.49) and for multiparous women was 0.12 (95% CI: 0.02-0.63). The time to first request for analgesics was later for those who received morphine (mean 22.9 h, 95% CI: 22.2-23.7) compared with saline (mean 18.9 h, 95% CI: 17.4-20.4) (P < 0.0001). The side-effect incidence (pruritus, nausea and vomiting, and sedation) was not different between the 2 groups. CONCLUSION: There was a 78% reduction in analgesic requirements in women given epidural morphine after vaginal delivery compared with placebo for both primiparous and multiparous patients. Women who receive epidural labor analgesia for vaginal deliveries and stay in the hospital for 24 h after delivery may benefit from postpartum administration of epidural morphine.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".