cesarean delivery

RECENT POSTS

October 7, 2011 | 4:52 PM | By

11 Ways To Lower The C-Section Rate (Your Suggestions Included)

Everyone’s been through it. But for some reason, the topic of childbirth seems to get people awfully riled up.

Readers responded passionately to a story we posted earlier this week about the rate of cesarean deliveries in the U.S. creeping up to 50 percent. The comments section included some intense back-and-forth on how to fix things.

So here are 11 suggestions for lowering the c-section rate. The first six come from John Queenan, an emeritus professor at Georgetown University’s department of obstetrics and gynecology and author of a recent editorial on the topic in the medical journal Obstetrics and Gynecology. The last batch are from readers.

1. Get a commitment from hospital obstetric departments to work on lowering the C-section rate and also cut down on the number of drug-based labor inductions. (See this related post on pregnant women inducing their own labor.) Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, cesarean delivery, childbirth, women's health
October 4, 2011 | 9:30 AM | By

Will The C-Section Rate Soon Hit 50 Percent?

A doctor wonders how to stop the relentless rise in C-sections

Pretty much everyone agrees that the number of cesarean deliveries in the U.S. is too high: the rate has soared from 6% in the 1960s to 32% today.

In a recent editorial in the medical journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, Deputy Editor Dr. John Queenan suggests that we have yet to reach the peak. “The rate is likely to exceed 50% very soon in the U.S.,” he writes. “How can we curtail this runaway increase in cesarean deliveries?”

What’s really troubling, says Queenan, Professor and Chair emeritus at Georgetown University’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, is that almost one-third of C-sections are for women who are having their first child, and that sets up a vicious cycle of future surgeries since vaginal births after cesareans (VBACs) are decreasing — some hospitals won’t even do them. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Medicine/Science, Personal Health, cesarean delivery, childbirth