BMJ 1996;313:755 (21 September)

Letters

Study should have been randomised

EDITOR,--We wish to make several comments about Robin Russell and colleagues' study looking at possible factors in long term backache after childbirth.1 Firstly, the study was not randomised with respect to controls, and the authors justify this by stating that randomisation would have been unethical. We would argue that a randomised controlled trial is the only way to validate the use of epidural analgesia in comparison with any other technique. At present, we are conducting a randomised controlled trial of pethidine versus epidural analgesia for pain relief in primiparas in labour; this trial was approved by Harrow Research Ethical Committee.

We collected data at six months post partum and found that 185 (36%) of 515 mothers had back pain. Among those who had had epidural analgesia the incidence of back pain was 36% (99/273). This supports Russell and colleagues' finding that epidural analgesia is unrelated to the subsequent development of . . . [Full text of this article]


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Relevant Article

Long term backache after childbirth: prospective search for causative factors
Robin Russell, Ruth Dundas, and Felicity Reynolds
BMJ 1996 312: 1384-1388. [Abstract] [Full Text]

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