Monday, October 19, 2009

Why breech matters

At the International Breech Conference, Dr. Marek Glezerman spoke about how to save the vanishing skill of vaginal breech birth. Dr. Glezerman is chair of OB/GYN at the Women's Hospital of the Rabin Medical Center, which does about 8,500 births per year. Breech presentation is directly or indirectly responsible for approximately 40% of his hospital's cesarean sections. (Keep in mind that his hospital's c-section rate is much lower than US or Canadian rates, so in North America the effect of breech presentation on direct and indirect c/s rates will be less dramatic)
  • Directly: 20% of all cesareans at his hospital are for breech presentation. 
  • Indirectly: 37% (give or take a percentage point--I don't have my conference notes with me right now) of cesareans at his hospital are repeats, and he estimated that over half of them are due to the primary c/s for breech.
Vaginal breech birth matters!

2 comments:

  1. You got that right RIXA! Breech vaginal birth matters. One of my favorite midwives here, one of the very few in my area who will attend a breech birth, (and out of hospital at that!) always says "Breech is the second most common way babies come out!" It is just a variation of normal! HCPs have got to start seeing it that way!!!

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  2. I had an interesting conversation w/ my OB/gyn a few years back about breech--she's fairly old-school (retired now), and mentioned that they basically don't even train OB/gyns to deliver breech any more except by C-section. I found it strange, but she linked it directly to the costs of litigation etc.

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