For Healthy Pregnancies, Inducing Labor at 39 Weeks Is Safe

Annette Perez-Delboy, MD, and patient

Annette Perez-Delboy, MD, and patient

Babies are “due” after 40 weeks of gestation, but evidence suggests that infant mortality and complications are lowest for those delivered at 39 weeks, when a fetus is considered full term. A new clinical trial, recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that although induction of labor at 39 weeks in low-risk nulliparous women resulted in a significantly lower frequency of cesarean delivery. The findings of the ARRIVE trial study were featured in CNN, USA Today, U.S. News and World Report, MSN.com, and the Associated Press.

The CUIMC Newsroom spoke about the study with Annette Perez-Delboy, MD, a maternal-fetal medicine expert at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center and a member of the trial’s research team. Additional study investigators from the Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at VP&S included Ronald Wapner, MD, professor of obstetrics & gynecology, and Cynthia Gyamfi-Bannerman, MD, the Ellen Jacobson Levine and Eugene Jacobson Professor of Women’s Health.

Read the full story at the CUIMC Newsroom