The placenta, also known as the afterbirth, is the organ inside the uterus [womb] that supplies the baby with its nutrients to grow during pregnancy.

After the baby is born, the placenta has to be delivered from the womb. In the majority of cases, there are no problems. However in up to 2% of cases, the placenta is retained inside the womb.

This is not usually a problem in the UK but often entails a visit to the operating theatre and under anaesthetic, the placenta is removed by hand [manual removal of the placenta]. In remoter parts of the developing world however where there are little or no theatre facilities, there can be problems with retained placentas that may affect the future health of the mother and can sometimes be fatal.

In this trial the idea is to assess a technique to make the uterus contract more efficiently by injecting a hormone called oxytocin into the umbilical vein of the placenta in a known level to see if it will expedite the expulsion of the placenta from the uterus. Initial trials suggest that this is a useful and safe technique that can be undertaken by midwives.

In this trial the dosage required will be assessed and the proportion of patients in whom the technique works will also be recorded. If the trial is successful and shows that injection of oxytocin into the umbilical vein does improve expulsion of the placenta, the technique can then easily be applied in developing countries of the world, thus saving many lives.

The centres involved in the trial are Liverpool and Sheffield in the UK and Kampala, Uganda.

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