Research Article
Expectant Management of Miscarriage in View of
NICE Guideline 154
Junaid Rafi and Haroona Khalil
Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust Hospital, Heath Road Ipswich, IP4 5PD, UK
Correspondence should be addressed to Junaid Raf; drjunaidraf@hotmail.com
Received 27 November 2013; Revised 12 January 2014; Accepted 21 March 2014; Published 27 April 2014
Academic Editor: Fabio Facchinetti
Copyright © 2014 J. Raf and H. Khalil. Tis is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License,
which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Objective. To fnd out the success rate of conservative management of complete two weeks for miscarriage in view of NICE Guideline
154. Design. Prospective observational study. Setting. Early pregnancy assessment units of District General Hospital in the United
Kingdom. Participants. Women of less than 14 weeks’ gestation, with a diagnosis of miscarriage (missed miscarriage/anembryonic
or incomplete miscarriage). Interventions. Expectant management for two weeks. Main Outcome Measure. (1) Efcacy of 2-week
expectant management, that is, complete resolution of miscarriage based either on self-reporting of patient afer passing products
of conception at home between D0 and D14 of expectant management or confrmation on scan at D14, and (2) short-term
complications needing strong analgesia, blood transfusion, and antibiotics. Results. Expectant management of miscarriage for 2
weeks from the day of diagnosis was successful in 58% (64 /111) and failed in 42% (47/111). Conclusions. Expectant management
success rate is consistent with the results from the longitudinal studies and RCTs published in the past. It is a safe option as none of
the patients on expectant/medical management needed strong analgesia/antibiotics or blood transfusion.
1. Introduction
Approximately 11–15% [1] of pregnancies result in sponta-
neous frst-trimester miscarriage and for some women, it
could be quite traumatic experience physically as well as
psychologically. Many women want to get over it and there-
fore are quite keen on active management; either medical or
surgical; however, a sizeable percentage seems keen to explore
conservative option of wait-and-see approach. Te new NICE
154 Guideline recommends expectant management for 7–14
days as the frst-line management strategy for miscarriage
to explore management options other than expectant man-
agement if the woman is at increased risk of haemorrhage
and had history of stillbirth, miscarriage, or ante partum
haemorrhage in previous pregnancy; for example, a history
of stillbirth, miscarriage or ante partum haemorrhage in
previous pregnancy; coagulopathies; unable to have a blood
transfusion or if there is evidence of infection. We aimed
to fnd out the success rate of conservative management of
complete two weeks for miscarriage.
2. Material and Method
We conducted this prospective longitudinal study from
August 2012 to June 2013 in District General Hospital setting.
Te NICE Guideline 154 was published in December 2012;
however, we started collecting data in our Early Pregnancy
Assessment Unit (EPAU) for this study since August 2012
when the draf version of NICE Guideline 154 was available
online. Over a ten months period, 130 cases were diagnosed
as missed miscarriage, out of which 111 agreed for expectant
management afer counselling. We categorised miscarriage
based on the ultrasound fnding into missed miscarriage
(MMC)/anembryonic pregnancy and incomplete miscar-
riage. For accuracy and uniformity, we calculated gestation
by ultrasound measurements as well rather than from last
menstrual period alone. We advised patients to inform us if
they thought they had a completed miscarriage by noticing
resolution of symptoms while being in the community before
two weeks and were further instructed to do urine pregnancy
test in two to three weeks’ time. However if the process of
Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Journal of Pregnancy
Volume 2014, Article ID 824527, 4 pages
http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/824527