Early pregnancy loss happens when a pregnancy that is not developing properly is found on an ultrasound before 12 weeks and 6 days. This type of loss occurs in about 10% of pregnancies. There are three main ways to treat this: waiting for it to pass naturally, using medication, or having surgery. Surgery is the most effective, working 99% of the time, compared to waiting (80% effective in 8 weeks) and medication (71-84% effective). Currently, surgery involves dilation of the cervix and curettage (removal of pregnancy tissue) with suction provided either from a manual hand-held pump or a machine. For the purposes of this study, a manual vacuum aspirator (or hand-held pump) will be used with ultrasound guidance. There is also another method called hysteroscopic resection, where the doctor uses a special camera to directly see and remove any pregnancy tissue from your uterus. Patients often want the quickest way to resolve the pregnancy loss, and physicians are unsure which surgical method is the best. It's also unclear if one type of surgery causes less scar tissue inside the uterus, affects the ability to test the tissue for genetic issues, or impacts how soon a patient can start fertility treatments again. This study aims to find out if hysteroscopic resection provides faster resolution and creates less scar tissue compared to the manual vacuum aspiration.
When a patient requires a manual vacuum aspiration (MVA), whether for an undesired pregnancy, missed abortion, or other nonviable pregnancy, she is undergoing an emotional experience. She is grieving the loss of her pregnancy, and is then faced with the anxiety of an invasive and often painful procedure. Minimizing the pain during this procedure must not be overlooked. There have been no randomized controlled trials evaluating pain control during MVA for nonviable pregnancy, and the data is mixed regarding analgesia for MVA for an elective abortion or other office procedures. Women being treated at the Women \& Infants Triage who have experienced a first trimester missed abortion, inevitable abortion, incomplete abortion or other nonviable pregnancy and are being treated with an outpatient manual vacuum aspiration will be asked to enroll in this study. Those who wish to participate will be randomly assigned to treatment with lidocaine gel or a placebo gel applied to the cervix during their procedure. The hypothesis is that topical lidocaine will decrease pain during manual vacuum aspiration.
With sensitive urine pregnancy tests, women are now able to confirm very early pregnancies. However, approximately one third of abortion facilities do not offer abortions at less than six weeks of pregnancy. Providers may be concerned that they will be unable to identify products of conception (POCs) in uterine aspirates after early abortion and about the time, cost and risk associated with following serum hCG levels when completed abortion cannot be confirmed by gross inspection. Many providers believe that manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) causes less destruction of pregnancy tissue and therefore may increase the likelihood of identifying POCs on gross inspection. No published reports specifically compare MVA to electric vacuum aspiration (EVA) for the detection of complete products of conception and none compare MVA and EVA at less than 6 weeks of pregnancy. We, the investigators, propose to conduct a randomized controlled trial comparing the sensitivity of MVA to EVA for the detection of completed abortion in 500 women with pregnancies of less than 6 weeks gestation at a large inner city family planning center. We will measure positive identification of POCs on gross inspection in patients subsequently shown to have completed abortions. We hypothesize that the rate of true positive detection of POCs will be higher in dilation and curettage (D\&C) using MVA than EVA.
The study titled, Manual Versus Electric Vacuum Aspiration for Pregnancy Termination Between 10-14 weeks: A Randomized Trial, is a randomized trial to compare procedure times for manual and electric vacuum aspiration for surgical abortion between 10 0/7 and 13 6/7 weeks gestation. Women presenting for surgical abortion between 10 0/7 and 13 6/7 weeks gestation will be randomized to either undergo manual vacuum aspiration (MVA) or electric vacuum aspiration (EVA). The investigators hypothesize that operative times will be increased when using manual vacuum aspiration, as compared to electric vacuum aspiration, for surgical abortion performed in the late first trimester (10 0/7 and-13 6/7 weeks).
Researchers will compare 3 standard of care methods of pleural fluid drainage during therapeutic thoracentesis. Patients are randomized to manual aspiration, vacuum bottle drainage or wall suction methods. Primary outcome is procedural time with secondary outcomes of pain and dyspnea scores.