Methodological considerations
death
OBSTRUCTED LABOUR
To our knowledge, this is the first report comparing maternal and umbilical cord lactate for predicting perinatal death among women with obstructed labour. Our estimate of perinatal death could have been much higher if it was not in a setting of a clinical trial where every effort was made to ensure that each of the enrolled women was delivered in less than two hours of diagnosis. In addition, half of our sample had been administered sodium bicarbonate, but this had no significant effect on the results as seen in the maternal lactate results at one hour after study drug administration.