Mobius Pain Study: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Standard Versus Mobius® Retraction at Cesarean Delivery

This is a prospective, randomized, patient blinded trial of standard surgical retraction versus Mobius® retraction at cesarean delivery. Women will be approached by their provider at their 36 week prenatal visit regarding potential study participation. They will be given a letter describing the study. If a woman is interested, she will be contacted by a study nurse who will obtain informed consent. Ideally, women will be approached prior to the onset of labor or date of scheduled cesarean delivery so as to provide adequate time to review the study and ask questions. Women who undergo antenatal admission will be also approached by their provider regarding possible study participation and given a recruitment letter. If they are interested, then a study nurse will obtain informed consent.

Consenting women will be randomized after the decision to deliver by cesarean section is made. Randomization will be performed in blocks to control for scheduled versus unscheduled cesarean deliveries using a random numbers generator. Assignments will be kept in sequentially number opaque envelopes. Women will not be informed of their assignment until after discharge from the hospital. Efforts will be made in the operating room to avoid disclosing group assignment and the consent forms will not contain the specific name of the retractor under study. The operative team will be aware of group assignment.

Participants will complete a 7 item pain scale each post-operative day until discharge. This pain scale has been used in a pilot study and found to be accurate. The pain scale is a single page and takes less than 5 minutes to complete.

Charts will be reviewed to obtain clinical information which may have an impact on post-operative pain. This includes information about current and past substance abuse. Because of the increased amounts of post-operative pain experienced by women who use methadone during pregnancy, this group of women will be excluded from the study. To protect the information regarding substance abuse, a certificate of confidentiality has been obtained from the NIH.