2006 US Cesarean Rate

The CDC just released its preliminary birth data for 2006. For yet another year, the US cesarean rate has hit a record high at 31.1%. This is a 50% rise over the past decade, and almost a six-fold increase since 1970, when 5.5% of women gave birth via cesarean section.

A 31.1% cesarean rate translates into 1,326,725 surgeries. 1,326,725 women recovering from major abdominal surgery while taking care of a newborn baby.

Let's imagine for a moment that we had a radically different maternity care system that put the basic needs of laboring women first. Even if most women continued to give birth in hospitals, we could do things very differently. What if hospitals implemented changes similar to Michel Odent's maternity clinic in Pithiviers Hospital. These changes were inexpensive and low-tech, including:

• soft, large mattresses--no delivery tables
  
• large, deep birthing pools
• birthing chairs
• cozy and private rooms
• extremely limited use of Pitocin (around 1%) and pain medications
  
• low-profile midwives overseeing births and consulting obstetricians for complicated cases
• mothers encouraged to labor and birth in whatever positions felt most comfortable to them.
• emphasis on creating a private, warm, and safe environment for the mother to labor in
  

Odent's hospital was able to achieve a 6-7% cesarean rate while at the time having one of the lowest neonatal mortality rates in the world. Other hospitals were only able to achieve such low mortality rates via a very high cesarean rate. The Pithiviers clinic served an unselected population; in other words, it didn't weed out unhealthy or "high risk" women and send them to a larger facility. Read more about Odent's clinic in Birth Reborn (pictures below are from the book).

If our country had a 7% cesarean rate, we would only have 298,620 cesarean sections performed each year. More than a million women and babies would avoid major surgery with all of its physical and emotional costs.

A typical French delivery room

Pithivier's new birth rooms
Midwife and laboring woman

Upright, physiological birth
(Michel Odent is supporting the woman's weight
while the midwife waits for the baby to emerge)

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Too fat and too old

Sometimes I wonder if vaginal birth will gradually go the way of the dinosaurs: extinct.

A friend of mine who works in hospital administration alerted me to a Webinar (Web seminar) that took place yesterday about "Cesarean Delivery and the Risk-Benefit Calculus." The seminar discussed the anticipated 50% cesarean rate by the year 2017--that is 10 years from now. If that is true, this presentation argued, hospitals will need to construct maternity wings with the capacity to handle 50% and higher cesarean rates in the near future.

This presentation said that rising cesarean rates (both actual and anticipated) were mostly to blame because of maternal obesity and age. Quoting from the PowerPoint slides that accompanied the presentation (all referring to the projected future scenario):

• Larger mothers lead to unhealthier babies
• Obesity co-morbidities and medications complicate care of pregnant women
• Rates of gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia skyrocket
• Increasing C-section rates cause downstream decrease in pelvic floor disorders (this claim was repeated several times, even though the medical literature reveals that cesareans do not prevent pelvic floor disorders)
  

Other contributing factors to the anticipated rise in cesarean rates will be:

• maternal age (which increases fertility treatments, which increases # of multiple births and high-risk pregnancies as well as congenital abnormalities)
• OBGYN lifestyle & liability issues

Some other predicted changes in maternity care over the next 10 years:

• The role of midwives moves to prenatal care as cesarean rates increase
• Insurance will drive midwives to work in large group practices
• LDRPs will be replaced by LDRs and a large increase in postpartum recovery rooms to handle the 50% or higher cesarean rate

The second half of the presentation was a historical overview of and justification for increased cesarean rates by Dr. Frederic D. Frigoletto of Harvard Medical School & Massachusetts General Hospital. What I found most disturbing were his assertions that increased cesarean rates result in "improved neonatal outcome." Specifically, his presentation claimed that increased cesarean rates had the following outcomes (all of which contradict most of the research on risks of cesarean sections):

• Lower rates of fetal hemorrhage, asphyxia, birth trauma, mechanical ventilation, infection, and meconium aspiration syndrome, and feeding problems

Is it just me, or does the marketing of a 50% or higher cesarean rate as health-promoting seem very, very creepy? Even when a cesarean is really needed for a true emergency, there is no denying the real toll it takes on mothers and babies. When a doctor performs a cesarean, it's not just an operation. It is the beginning of a new mother-child relationship! It creates an extra handicap, sending the mother home to recover from major abdominal surgery, to deal with the possible emotional and physical trauma of that operation, especially if it was unplanned or unwanted, all while taking care of a newborn.

I am also disturbed by the blame-the-woman mentality. Women are too old, too fat, too demanding (one factor he listed was the "premium baby" factor), too unhealthy...Especially the real negativity towards women of size. The problem with this attitude is that it often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I've been re-reading parts of Michel Odent's recent book The Caesarean. Here is his take on cesarean rates:

The aim should be that as many women as possible give birth vaginally thanks to an undisturbed flow of love hormones. However, the primary objective should not be to reduce the rates of caesareans: it would be dangerous, if not preceded by a first step. This first step should be an attempt to promote a better understanding of birth physiology and particularly a better understanding of the basic needs of women in labour.

His maternity clinic in Pithiviers was able to keep cesarean rates between 6-7% while simultaneously having some of the lowest perinatal mortality rates in Europe--something other countries were unable to do without a dramatic increase in cesarean rates. He explains why: women at Pithiviers labored in an environment which facilitated the proper timing and release of hormones. Drugs were almost never used. Pitocin was quite rare, only about 1% of labors. Women were free to labor in whatever positions they wanted, with no one telling them what to do. The clinic's highest priority was that the woman felt safe, secure, warm, and unobserved. For more details about his clinic, read Birth Reborn.

I have a PDF of the powerpoint if anyone would like to take a look at it, by the way.

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Me and Michel

Here's a picture of me from 2005 with Michel Odent at The Future of Birth Conference in Columbia, Missouri. I don't care for movie stars or famous athletes, but I was definitely star-struck when I met Dr. Odent!

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