Researchers at the University of Toronto's maternal infant and reproductive health research unit have concluded that multiple manual vaginal exams not only predict risk of chorioamnionitis in women with ruptured membranes, but that they are a risk. Research showing that multiple vaginal exams increase rates of infection, however, has not translated into a change in clinical practice. Women given eight or more manual vaginal exams have rates of infection five times greater than women with three or less, based on a controlled trial of 5,041 women whose waters broke at term and before labor began. Chorioamnionitis and longer duration of active labor were found to be the two most important predictors of postpartum fever.
-Birth Gazette, Vol. 14 No. 4
Reprinted from Midwifery Today E-News (Vol 1 Issue 10, Mar. 5, 1999)
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