Iran Journal of Nursing

  Background and Aim : Each year, more than 150 millions women become pregnant in the developed countries and most of the pregnancies result in the birth of one living newborn from a healthy mother. But, for some of the women, labor has not been easy and gladly and it follows with the feeling of fear, pain, suffering and even death. Hard labor or dystocia of labor is one of the main reasons of the death of mothers which is preventable or curable by correct and on-time control. Prevalence of dystocia has been reported in different points and has been from %4 to %15.

  Up to the present time, a comprehensive research has not been obtained from prevalence of labor distocia in Iran therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of hard labor and the related factors in women referring to the public maternity hospitals of Qom in 2005-2006.

  Material and Method: The present research is a descriptive analytic study on 4325 women ready for labor referring to the public hospitals of Qom within 5.5 month. The instrument for collecting data was a questionnaire completed with observation, interview and examination. Finally, data were analyzed using SPSS.

  Result: The findings showed that the prevalence of long and hard labor was 7.5±0.78. In this regard, non-proportion of the head of fetus with pelvic of mother, disorder of womb forces, having epidural anesthesia, receiving narcotic sedative more than one hour to labor, mental fatigue of mother and not cooperating the woman and polyhydraminos were most related to hard labor, respectively. The most related fetal factors were macrosomia, malposition and the existence of umbilical cord around the neck of newborn, respectively. The results showed that hard labor had a statistically significant relationship with the age of mother, level of education, occupation ,weight gain during pregnancy, kind of center for receiving prenatal services, record of hard labor and the record of abortion, and existence of diabetes (P<0.000).

  Conclusion: The results showed that the prevalence of hard labor is moderate as compared with some of the regions of the world. Anyway, by considering that up to now, a comprehensive epidemiologic study has not been reported in Iran about the labor dystocia, and with regard to its dangerous effects on mother and fetus, further study is recommended.