Association between analgesia and labour duration as well as mode of birth

Objective: No research has been done on the combination of epidural and opioid analgesia during labour with respect to sequence and timing. This study investigates the association of analgesia, opioids or epidural or the combination of both with labour duration and spontaneous birth in nulliparous women. Methods: A secondary data analysis of an existing cohort study was performed and included nulliparous women (n = 2074). Durations of total labour and first and second labour stage were calculated with Kaplan-Meier estimation for the four different study groups: no analgesia (n = 620), opioid analgesia (n = 743),…