CMICR celebrates a milestone

Sunnybrook's Centre for Mother, Infant, and Child Research (CMICR) is celebrating a major milestone this week. After eight years of recruiting women and babies for the Twin Birth Study (TBS), the study signs its final recruits this week, bringing the total number of pariticipants to 2,800.

The study aims to answer the question: "Which is the better approach for management of twin pregnancies of 32-38 weeks gestation, where the first twin (twin A) is presenting cephalic (head down): planned caesarean section (CS) or planned vaginal birth (VB)?" To date, no study of this size has been conducted to determine the better method of delivery.

Finding that answer has taken the CMICR team around the globe. Participants have come from 25 countries, including Canada, the United States, Argentina, the United Kingdom and Australia. The size and scope of this international trial reflects the importance of CMICR in the research community.

"Physicians and patients from around the world are looking to us for these answers," says Dr. Elizabeth Aszlatos, director of CMICR. "Whether results indicate necessity for a change, or even reinforce current standards of practice, it's impossible to deny the results of such significant trials."

Results are expected to be published next spring. Lead investigator Dr. Jon Barrett says there's still a lot of work ahead to clean and analyze the data, but he's looking forward to the outcome. "It's good to have evidence for physicians to back up what they're doing, and good for mothers to have evidence to help them make decisions on how they'll deliver."