Early Pregnancy Events and short and long-term pregnancy outcomes,EPOS
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Early Pregnancy Events and Impact on short-term and long-term pregnancy outcomes (EPOS)
IRAS ID
146548
Contact name
Tom Bourne
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Imperial College Joint Research Compliance Office
Research summary
Within the healthcare sector, determining who may require increased surveillance in their pregnancy will contribute to provision of early pregnancy and antenatal services. Early pregnancy events and complications are among the most common reasons women to seek medical care. Most of these events occur in the first trimester, for example, vaginal bleeding. Abnormal ultrasound features that may also be observed. There are immediate risks associated with these features that include the possibility of miscarriage. In a meta-analysis by the ESHRE early pregnancy special interest group it has been suggested that bleeding and pain in early pregnancy may be associated with a risk of later complications in pregnancy including intra-uterine growth restriction, pregnancy-induced hypertension and pre-term labour. These data are retrospective and the characterisation of the events described is suboptimal. There were no attempts to quantify pain or duration of episodes of pain and bleeding. Similarly the presence of sub-chorionic haematoma has been related to both miscarriage and premature labour. However the relative importance of the size, location and timing of these lesions is largely not known.
There is a clear need to prospectively evaluate the long-term impact of events in early pregnancy. The clinical relevance of such a study is that women can be selected as being “at risk” and so offered appropriate fetal surveillance and potential early intervention when necessary. However, it is clearly inappropriate and would create a vast amount of work with associated costs if all women who suffered an early pregnancy complication were offered serial scans. We urgently need to understand which early pregnancy events represent a risk to the fetus in later pregnancy and direct any surveillance strategies towards those women selected to be at risk.REC name
London - Riverside Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/LO/0199
Date of REC Opinion
12 Feb 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion