DEDICATED PRETERM BIRTH PREVENTION CLINICS
In recent years, many health regions and hospitals have developed
dedicated preterm birth prevention clinics. These clinics and their
associated services have employed a wide variety of criteria outlining
who should attend and the protocols for management. The first
large-scale attempt to determine the effectiveness of such a program
was the West Los Angeles Preterm Birth Prevention Project
in which eight prenatal county clinics in California were allocated
at random to be experimental or control clinics (84). The intervention
was based on providing additional education to the women
and offering more clinic attendances. In the experimental group,
there was a 19% reduction (9.1–7.4%) in the preterm birth rate
when compared with that of the control clinics. This difference in
rates was statistically significant when the number of patient risk
factors was taken into account. In pregnancies of black women, the
preterm birth rate was 15% in the experimental clinics and 22%
in the control clinics. Secondary interventions of bed rest, social
work assistance, and oral synthetic progesterone medication were
of no additional benefit.
More recently, most dedicated preterm birth prevention clinics
have focused on newer diagnostics and therapeutic interventions
including assessment of vaginal microbiology, fibronectin testing,
ultrasound detection of shortened cervix, antibiotic use, progesterone
therapy, cervical cerclage, and Arabin cervical pessaries. A
survey of 23 dedicated preterm birth prevention clinics in UK
in 2012/13 revealed considerable heterogeneity in protocols and
practices suggesting a need for effective networking and coordination
of such services (85). Also, there was considerable variation