Efficacy of Nifedipine Versus Hydralazine in Management of Severe Hypertension in Pregnancy
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2019-02-20
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Introduction - Hypertension is the commonest medical complication of pregnancy. When severe,
it puts the lives of both the mother and the unborn baby at risk. Therefore, immediate
lowering of blood pressure is indicated whenever this is detected. Different
anti-hypertensive drugs are being used to that effect, but more commonly these include:
hydralazine, labetalol and nifedipine. Nifedipine, despite being cheap, readily available,
safe in pregnancy and easy to administer, is hardly utilized for this purpose in our setting.
Hydralazine is usually used instead.
Objectives - This will be: to determine the efficacy of nifedipine and compare it with that
of hydralazine, which is more commonly used, and to compare their maternal and fetal side
effect profile.
Materials and methods - This will be a prospective randomized controlled open label study of
nifedipine versus hydralazine. Patients will be assigned to different arms of the study using
computer-generated random numbers. Efficacy and adverse effects of the drugs will be noted on
each arm of the study. Data will be collated, tabulated and then statistically analysed using
the statistical package for social sciences (SPSS).
Conclusion - The outcome of the study will enable recommendation to be made on the use of
nifedipine for severe hypertension if found to be effective.