A rapid systematic review of postpartum bladder care guidelines and recommendations in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

New pathways for the management of postpartum voiding dysfunction and postpartum urinary retention should be considered to shorten hospital stays and promote early discharge during the COVID-19 pandemic. This rapid systematic review aimed to identify relevant national and international guidelines, and summarise available recommendations on postpartum bladder care that are relevant to women's care and management at the time of the pandemic. We searched Medline, Embase and Cochrane from inception till September 2021. Hand-searching of national and international specialist societies' websites was performed. We identified one international technical consultation, one international society's report of recommendations and two national guidelines. Guidelines stated that postnatal women should not be left more than 6 hours without voiding and assessed for postpartum urinary retention. As the cut-off of 150 ml for the diagnosis of significant postvoid residual volume is commonly used with no reported adverse outcomes, it could be beneficial to adopt this instead of 100 ml as further unnecessary interventions can be avoided. Such changes can reduce the number of women staying in the hospital. Clean intermittent self-catheterisation for the management of postpartum urinary retention could be considered as an option during the COVID-19 pandemic aiming to shorten hospital stays and avoid further attendances. Optimised bladder care has become more relevant during the coronavirus pandemic by striving towards self-care, community-based and remote care. We propose consideration of intermittent self-catheterisation in cases of postpartum urinary retention enabling self-care and avoidance of hospital visits.

Case of a chronic ectopic pregnancy misdiagnosed as pelvic inflammatory disease.

The definition of a chronic ectopic pregnancy (CEP) is poorly defined in the literature and making a timely diagnosis can be incredibly challenging. This is primarily due to its broad range of clinical presentations and conflicting biochemical and sonographic results. Often, CEPs are mistaken for ovarian malignancies, pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), uterine fibroids or endometriosis, therefore, leading to a delayed diagnosis. We present a case report of a woman who was initially misdiagnosed with PID and then later preoperatively diagnosed with a CEP. This case particularly highlights the diagnostic dilemma posed by CEPs and raises awareness of the key clinical symptoms, biochemical and sonographic investigations which in combination can contribute towards making a timely preoperative diagnosis.

Episcissors-60™ and obstetrics anal sphincter injury: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION AND HYPOTHESIS: The National Health Service (NHS) in England has chosen the Episcissors-60™ as one of the products included in the NHS Innovation Accelerator programme. However, the evidence for its effectiveness is scanty. We therefore set out to systematically review the literature to compare risk of obstetric anal sphincter injury (OASI) in women who had undergone episiotomy with Episcissors-60™ versus those who had an episiotomy with other scissors. METHODS: Electronic search was performed on the Healthcare Databases Advanced Search (HDAS) platform using the MEDLINE, EMBASE and CINHAL search engines up to September 2018. The search words used were 'Episcissors-60' or 'episcissors 60.' Studies were included if patients who had episiotomies with Episcissors-60™ were compared with parallel or historic patients who had episiotomy with other scissors. The only restriction used was "human" studies. RESULTS: Of the initial 21 citations, 4 studies had enough information to be included in the meta-analysis. The number of study participants ranged from 63 to 4314. When comparing 797 patients who had episiotomies with Episcissors-60™ to 1122 patients who had episiotomies with other scissors, there was a significant reduction in OASI: risk difference = -0.04 (95% CI = -0.07 to -0.01; p = 0.005, I2 = 41%). The number needed to treat was 25 (95% CI = 14-100). This was not associated with an increase in episiotomy rate. CONCLUSIONS: We reported the first systematic review on the effect of Episcissors-60™ on OASI rate. Although the studies are few, and of small size and low quality, the results are promising in terms of possible reduction in OASI.