The drug, called Cytotec by manufacturers G.D. Searle and Pfizer Inc., has a success rate of around 85 percent, says Jun Zhang of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the chief author of the study.
The treatment is less risky than surgery and the pills can be inserted into the vagina at home, he tells Reuters.
About one in four women will have a spontaneous abortion or some other type of failed pregnancy. If some tissue is left in the uterus, doctors may advise waiting up to a month so it can be expelled naturally, but that does not always work.
For women who don't want to wait, the traditional alternative has been a D&C, which stands for dilation and curettage and involves a surgical scraping of the uterus. A newer technique uses a vacuum to clean the uterus.
The results "show that this treatment may be an option that is preferable to surgery for some women," says Beverly Winikoff in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, where the study appears.
