Use of Drug Pitocin Does Not Decrease Cesarean Rate

When progress is slow during the first stage of labor, the drug pitocin is often started to help increase the frequency and intensity of contractions. Pitocin is the synthetic version of the body’s own oxytocin which causes the uterus to contract. The thought process is that adding pitocin will speed up labor and avoid a cesarean for “failure to progress”. While this large study confirms that use of pitocin in a “slow” labor may decrease total labor time by two hours, it does not decrease the number of overall cesareans. While the study reveals that using pitocin does not have adverse effects on mother or baby, it doesn’t help avoid cesarean section for delivery.

Like all studies and statistics, this needs to be interpreted very carefully. The study’s authors recommend that doctors and midwives look for alternative ways to speed up a slow labor. Perhaps we should review Friedman’s work. For those of you who do not know, Dr. Friedman studied labor patterns many decades ago and defined six labor problems. A “protracted labor” or slow labor was one of the six; however, by his own study, his recommendation was to simply wait. A protracted labor usually ended in a vaginal delivery. Perhaps all we “modern” doctors and midwives need to just wait longer for the body to do its work without trying so hard to “fix” the labor since pitocin doesn’t seem to be helping us out that much.