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Safety and efficacy of Tamsulosin as medical expulsive therapy in pregnancy

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Abstract

Purpose

Use of medical expulsive therapy (MET) is common practice in urology for the treatment of symptomatic urolithiasis, despite this its efficacy is debated. Its use in pregnancy is controversial. Our objective was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of Tamsulosin as a MET in pregnant women.

Material and methods

We retrospectively identified pregnant patients who presented with renal colic at the CHU de Québec from 2000 to 2015. We compared patients who received Tamsulosin as MET to a control group without MET. We evaluated efficacy as passage rate of lithiasis and necessity of intervention. We evaluated safety of the treatment according to fetal outcomes (birth weight, APGAR, gestational age).

Results

We evaluated 207 pregnant patients presenting renal colic, 69 patients in the MET group were compared to 138 patients in the control group. Of these, 48 (70%) in the Tamsulosin therapy group and 76 (56%) in the control group had proven urolithiasis. No significant difference was found for mean gestational age at birth, birth weight and APGAR. No sudden infant death syndrome was encountered in Tamsulosin group. There was no significant difference for length of hospital stay and need for surgical intervention. The spontaneous passage rate was 58% (25/48) in the MET group compared to 43% (29/76), but this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.18).

Conclusions

Short-term utilisation of Tamsulosin as MET in second and third trimester of pregnancy is not associated with adverse maternal or infant outcomes. Moreover, there was no significant adjunct for the rate of stone passage.

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Acknowledgements

Anne-Sophie Julien provided expertise and assistance with statistical analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Urology, Department of Surgery, CHU de Québec-Université Laval, Hôpital Saint-François D’Assise, 10 rue de l’Espinay, Ville de Québec, QC, G1L 3K5, Canada

    Benoît Theriault, Fannie Morin & Jonathan Cloutier

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  1. Benoît Theriault
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  2. Fannie Morin
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  3. Jonathan Cloutier
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Contributions

BT: data collection, data analysis, manuscript writing; FM: project development, data collection; JC: project development, manuscript writing. Study conception was performed by JC and FM. Material preparation and data collection were performed by FM and BT. Data analysis was performed by BT. The first draft of the manuscript was written by BT and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Benoît Theriault.

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Theriault, B., Morin, F. & Cloutier, J. Safety and efficacy of Tamsulosin as medical expulsive therapy in pregnancy. World J Urol 38, 2301–2306 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00345-019-03022-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00345-019-03022-z

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