Vacuum Assisted Vaginal Delivery: Prevalence, Indication, Fetal, Maternal Outcomes at Temeke Hospital Dar es Salaam: Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract Background: Vacuum extraction delivery is instrumental assisted vaginal delivery performed for maternal or fetal reasons. Practitioners prefer to perform it rather than other methods of assisted vaginal delivery because it is easy to use, requires less anesthesia/analgesia and safer than other methods. A support from (CCBRT) in Tanzania, training on vacuum-assisted deliveries has been conducted to health providers at Temeke Regional Referral Hospital and equipment supplied for carrying out the procedure. Aim: To determine the prevalence and describe maternal and fetal outcomes of vacuum-assisted vaginal deliveries (VAVD) at Temeke Hospital in Tanzania Method: A descriptive cross-sectional hospital-based study was conducted at Temeke Referral Hospital in Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania. All women who met inclusion criteria were involved in getting 247 women delivered by vacuum-assisted vaginal delivery from June to December 2017. Data on demographic characteristics, maternal and fetal outcomes were collected by registered nursing officers/midwives using a checklist, analyzed by SPSS, and summarized using frequency distributions and charts. Result: Two hundred forty-seven women, were identified to have undergone vacuum-assisted vaginal delivery during the study period, (60.7%) of them had reached 39-40 weeks of gestation. Maternal exhaustion, followed by delayed second stage of labor was an indication of VAVD at 42.1% and 25.5% respectively. 96.3% of the newborns weighed 2.5-4.0 kilograms. Apgar score was 7 to 10 at 5 minutes. Of 5,400 deliveries, the prevalence of the vacuum-assisted deliveries was 4.57%. Successful cases were 97.2% with failure rate of 2.8%. Conclusion: The use of Vacuum Assisted vaginal delivery was reported to be 4.57% with preponderance in multiparous women. The rate of vacuum-assisted deliveries increased due to efforts of CCBRT at Temeke Hospital to train middle cadres, provision of equipment and facilities for the purpose. The method if properly supervised and conducted, can benefit pregnant women, reduce maternal, neonatal morbidity and mortalit