The US National Institutes of Health gathered an expert panel a little while ago to review medical literature on the risks of caesarean sections in healthy women. A decade ago 20% of the babies born in the United States were by caesarean section and today it is around 305, and lots of other countries are seeing similar increases. The panel concluded that there is so little hard evidence that they could not come to a conclusion on whether C-sections are more or less risky than vaginal births in healthy women. Part of the difficulty the panel had was that few studies looked specifically at healthy women.
It is unclear whether women are choosing C-sections to fit their busy schedules and bypass the pain of labour or whether at the advice of doctors. The panel did conclude that elective C-sections are risky for women who want to have more than one children. They also advised against elective C-sections prior to 39 weeks because of the prematurity of fetal lungs.
It seems there are no easy answers and this debate will continue. You can read more about it here.
Filed under: Neonatal
