Study: Clarithromycin safe alternative for cesarean deliveries

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, azithromycin was one of the virus’s unproven, potential treatments, and the resulting shortage forced US doctors to rely on the substitute drug clarithromycin as an adjunct surgical prophylaxis for preventing endometritis in non-elective cesarean deliveries. Now, new research findings reveal that the option is a safe alternative.

In a recent study published by PLOS One, 4.5% of healthy women who were given clarithromycin and needed cesarean deliveries developed endometritis compared with 11.2% of those who didn’t receive any adjunct macrolide prophylaxis (crude analysis, P = 0.025).

Postpartum endometritis is a womb infection with a 1% to 3% incidence rate after vaginal delivery, but anywhere from a 13% to 90% incidence rate after cesarean delivery, according to Medscape.