Safety
Safety was defined according to the proportions of medical abortions
that involved one or more significant adverse events. We defined
significant adverse events as haemorrhage requiring transfusion,
significant infection requiring hospital admission, major surgery, and
death. We also examined the incidence of ectopic pregnancy and when it
was diagnosed in the care pathway. All patients referred for further
diagnostics (e.g. serial βhCG monitoring) but who had no further
treatment are included in the ectopic pregnancy group although a
proportion of these will be pregnancy of unknown locations (PULs) that
includes failed early intrauterine pregnancies. We analysed the
proportion of cases where treatment was reported to have occurred at ≥10
weeks’ gestation in the telemedicine-hybrid cohort (this outcome does
not apply to the traditional cohort since all gestations were determined
by ultrasound scan).