Terbutaline versus nifedipine for prolongation of pregnancy in patients with preterm labor

Objective: To compare the effectiveness, safety, and possible adverse effects of terbutaline and nifedipine in prolonging pregnancy beyond 48 h. Methods: A randomized controlled trial was conducted with 174 pregnant women admitted with preterm labor randomized into 2 groups, which were given terbutaline (95 patients) and nifedepine (79 patients), respectively. Bivariate and multivariate analyses, using logistic regression, were used to analyze the data. Results: No statistically significant difference was found between the 2 groups in terms of prolongation of gestation to 48 h. The failure rate in terms of prolonging gestation for 24 h was found to be 12.6% for the terbutaline group and 10.1% for the nifedipine group, which was not found to be statistically significant (P value = 0.61). Side effects were significantly more common in the terbutaline group, except for maternal hypotension. Conclusion: Terbutaline and nifedipine appear to be equally effective in their tocolytic action. However, nifedipine did have the advantage of ease of administration. It also had significantly less effect on the fetal heart rate.