To give pregnant women the chance to experience painless labor analgesics, a group of midwives in the US proposed to restore the usage of laughing gas as an alternative for afflicting labor analgesics.
Nitrous oxide, the formal name of laughing gas had been used in the medicine industry mainly for anesthetics and analgesics for more than 150 years as defined by Medscape Drugs and Diseases.
The Research Animal Resources said that analgesia is different from hypnosis in terms that analgesics in some instances would completely eradicate the pain, unlike anesthetic which only temporarily reliefs anyone from suffering.
In an article published by NPR Shots Health News, the South County Hospital in South Kingstown, Rhode Island recently announced that they would revive the usage of nitrous oxide as an option for pain relief during labor.
A patient of the hospital, Amy Marks who tried the laughing gas pain reliever during her work stated that the medicine helped her bear and induced the rest of the contractions and pain.
The hospital's midwife, Cynthia Voytas agreed to Marks' statement and said that the pain reliever given to her was a blend of50 percent oxygen and 50 percent nitrous oxide. In fact, this combination is also commonly used by several countries cited byAmerican Pregnancy Association.
Vanderbilt University School of Nursing director of nurse-midwifery and the lead proponent to nitrous oxide reinstallation, Michelle Collins said that women's demand for painless labor is increasing and that more women are trying to be heard.
In a position statement given by the American College of Nurse-Midwives, they stated that the usage of laughing gas as labor analgesia is safe and could cause no harmful effects on the mother and the fetus during the progress of work although some side effects like dizziness and nausea might occur thus careful administering is needed.
Laughing gas had been recorded as painless based on Helen Keate'sAnaesthesia as it does not completely numb any part of the body.
Collins concluded that laughing gas demand would increase once its awareness is heightened aside from its profitability.
