Ethamsylate for the prevention of morbidity and mortality in preterm or very low birth weight infants

Prematurely born infants are at likelihood of bleeding into the brain in the first few weeks of life. This is called intraventricular haemorrhage. The risk of this occurring is best to infants who are given birth to less than 32 several weeks gestation. Many potential treatments have been studied to determine if they might reduce the likelihood of this blood loss. One such remedy is a drug called Ethamsylate. It is not exactly known how this medicine works, but it shows up to reduce bleeding consist of clinical situations, such as excessive menstrual bleeding and after some types of surgery.

An overall total of more effective studies with 1410 preterm infants were included in this review. Most of these initial studies were conducted between 1980 and 1990. Preterm infants handled with ethamsylate had similar outcomes with respect to death and disability at the age of two years when compared to newborns who were given a placebo. Infants born less than 35 weeks gestation appeared to have less intraventricular haemorrhage when treated with ethamsylate compared to controls, however this did not lead to increased developmental outcome in later childhood. There were no negative effects noted with ethamsylate treatment.

Based on these results, routine use of ethamsylate for prematurely created infants to avoid intraventricular haemorrhage cannot be recommended. This is highly unlikely that any further trials will be conducted to explore this clinical question.