Therapeutic amnioinfusion in oligohydramnios during pregnancy (excluding labor)

Background: Oligohydramnios is a serious complication of pregnancy that is associated with a poor perinatal outcome and complicates 1-5% of pregnancies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the role of antepartum transabdominal amnioinfusion on amniotic fluid volume/latency period in pregnancies with oligohydramnios.Methods: This study was conducted in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences Soura Srinagar. In this study, a total of 54 pregnant women with ultrasonographically diagnosed oligohydramnios i.e. AFI < 5 cm and gestational age of >24 weeks were taken for therapeutic amnioinfusion and its effects on amniotic fluid volume were studied. Statistical Software SPSS (Version 20.0) and Microsoft excel were used to carry out the statistical analysis of data. P-value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.Results: Mean age of patients in our study was 27.5±3.19 years and gestational age group of 28-34 weeks. The mean AFI pre and post amnioinfusion was found to be 3.3 cm and 8.8 cm respectively. The difference was found to be statistically significant with a p value of <0.001. There was increase in the latency period in the studied patients with a mean latency period of 42.8±14.94 days. Mean number of transabdominal amnioinfusions in our study was 1.48±0.64. In our study, majority of patients i.e. 33 (61.1%) delivered at 38-40 weeks with a mean age at delivery 37.4±1.92 weeks. In our study, maximum number of patients i.e. 32 (59.3%) were delivered by full term normal delivery and only 15 (27.8%) required caesarean section. 78% of newborns weighed >2.5kg. The mean weight of newborn was 2.9±0.59 kgs. The incidence of newborn admissions to NICU was 20.4%. Number of neonatal deaths in our study was 5.6%. There was reduction of neonatal admission to NICU and neonatal deaths after transabdominal amnioinfusion.Conclusions: Antepartum transabdominal amnioinfusion is a useful procedure to reduce complications resulting from decreased intra-amniotic volume. It significantly raises the amniotic fluid especially useful in preterm pregnancies, where the procedure allows for a better perinatal outcome by significantly prolonging the duration of pregnancy, increasing birth weight, preventing fetal distress and thereby reducing operative intervention. Optimizing the selection of patients who are good candidates for the procedure is a prerequisite