Effectiveness of Sengstaken-Blankemore tube to control postpartum hemorrhage

Nam, An Na; Kim, Kyong Jin; Jang, Byoung Woo; Hur, Seung Eun; Lee, Seong Ki; Kil, Ki Hyun; Ahn, Mi Jin; Lee, Ji Young

Abstract

OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the effectiveness and identify the role of interventional procedure of tamponade treatment with modified Sengstaken-Blankemore (S-B) tube on control of postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) unresponsive to conventional medical treatment.
METHODS
This study was performed retrospectively on the clinical records of 90 patients who had experienced PPH at the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of OO University Hospital from February, 2000 to September, 2005. We have actively applied tamponade balloon since 2004. As a result, tamponade balloon were applied to 17 patients. Medical records were reviewed such as clinical status, cause of bleeding, volume of balloon, duration of balloon, complication, success rate and additional treatment.
RESULTS
We have overall success rate of tamponade balloon in 11 (64.7%) of 17 patients of PPH. The causes of bleeding were subinvolution of uterus (100%), uterine atony (80%) and abnormal placentation (20%) in order of success rate. There was no major complication related to the tamponade procedure. We had compared final treatment during two period (before tamponade use v.s after tamponade use). 15 (33.3%) received invasive procedure and 8 (17.8%) received hysterectomy before tamponade use. However 10 (22.2%) received invasive procedure and just 1 (2.2%) received hysterectomy after tamponade use.
CONCLUSION
Tamponade with modified S-B tube is effective on PPH unresponsive to conventional medical treatment and cuts down additional invasive procedure when tamponade treatment failed.