Diazepam as a sedative in induced abortion.

In 136 patients, who underwent induced abortion by the vacuum curettage method under local anaesthesia (paracervical block), the effect of 10 mg diazepam intravenously as preoperative sedative was investigated for its ability to abolish the subjective experience of pain. The trial was carried out as a paired sample, random, allocation, double-blind, fixed dose trial, and the statistical method was sequential analysis. Thirty-six pairs showed no difference and were excluded. After 32 pairs (24 A preferences and 8 O preferences), diazepam showed a significant superiority to placebo (p less than 0.05) (Fig. 1.) Amnesia for the procedure was reported by about one-quarter of the diazepam-treated patients, and in practically all cases the sedative effect had subsided 1-3 hours after the operation.