PREVENTIVE ANTENATAL INTERVENTIONS TO REDUCE PREMATURE BIRTHS

Abstract

Prematurity is the leading cause of neonatal mortality and one of the most challenging public health issues through the high and complex long-term morbidity and socio-financial burden of neonatal rehabilitation. Given the risks of preterm birth, multiple antenatal interventions were supposed avoiding prematurity (or at least the avoidance of very low- weight premature): tocolysis, corticotherapy, periventricular hemorrhages prophylaxis, antibiotherapy and also providing a safety delivery environment for the mother. The main objective of our paper was to evaluate the role of antenatal interventions in preventing premature births and their complications. Our paper is a narrative review and we selected studies from PubMed database from January 2000 to January 2021 using the following Medical Subject Headings: tocolysis, antibiotherapy, corticosteroids, prematurity, vitamin K, latency period. The results of the studies show there is an improvement of fetal and maternal outcomes when certain drugs are used such as tocolytic agents, antibiotherapy or corticosteroids. Every class of drug we presented in our paper aim to reduce the mortality and morbidity of the neonates and administrated in a rigorous manner, they prevent most of the unlikely outcomes. The data that support these strategies are limited in terms of the number of published studies, however, all the studies we included support the administration of tocolytic agents, antibiotherapy and corticosteroids as well as vitamin K.