A Comparison of the Effects of Entonox and Spinal Anesthesia on Labor Progress

Introduction: Childbirth is one of the biggest events in women’s lives, putting women and neonates in special psychophysical conditions. Although childbirth is considered a natural process it is potentially dangerous. The present research goal was to study the effect of Entonox and spinal anesthesia on the pain and process of labor and study the side effects of these methods. Methods: This clinical trial was carried out on 120 pregnant women in the active labor phase. The selected women had no background disease or reason for C-section. Of these 120 women, 60 women delivered under spinal anesthesia and 60 women received Entonox. The qualitative factors of the Entonox and spinal anesthesia groups were compared through the chi-squared test, while their quantitative factors were compared through the independent t-test and Mann-Whitney tests. Data analysis was also carried out in SPSS version 20, and the p-value below 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant.Results: there is no significant difference between the spinal anesthesia and Entonox groups with respect to employment status (p=0.261), history of abortion (p=0.690), average age (p=0.795), pregnancy age (p=0.957), gravid (p=0.924), and number of previous pregnancies (p=0.693). the volume of post-intervention severe vaginal hemorrhage was significantly higher in the spinal anesthesia group as compared to the Entonox group (10% vs. 0%, respectively, p=0.027). However, there was no significant difference between the two groups with respect to the other side effects such as hypertension (p> 0.99), underweight (p> 0.99), average respiration rate (p=0.102), heart rate (p=0.460), the 5-minute apgar score (p=0.324), neonate’s height (p=0.444), and cervical dilation at the end of labor (p=0.339).Discussion: The spinal anesthesia method was superior in pain management, and the only considerable difference between the side effects of spinal anesthesia and Entonox was the volume of vaginal hemorrhage. However, the responses of women interested in natural childbirth should still be identified and compared. More studies are also required to explore the role of nitrogen oxide in pain management prior to spinal anesthesia.

Keywords:

Entonox , Spinal Anesthesia , Labor Progress