New Guidelines Designed to Reduce Casearian Section Rates

I’m not an OB/GYN, but it seems to me that if one out of every three births required a C-section, the human species probably wouldn’t have survived up until now.  Just seems like simple logic to me.  You know, because we haven’t always had C-sections.  I’m pretty sure Grok the Caveman wasn’t sharpening up his flint axe for the birth of Grok, Jr.

In fact, a 32% C-section rate sounds pretty darn absurd to me.  That’s what we’re up to as of 2007, by the way, in case anybody is counting.  However, I don’t want to focus on the negative… there’s some good news.  Doctors are creating some new guidelines to help reduce the C-section rate.

In the old days, if you had a C-section once, guess what… you were going to get another one next time.  Turns out, though, that it is indeed possible to have a good old fashioned vaginal delivery after having had a C-section birth.

Why was that “once a C-section, always a C-section” rule in place?  Well, the risks do go up a bit for women having vaginal birth after a Caesarian.  Not a terrible amount, but in today’s sue-happy legal climate, that’s enough to keep embattled OB-GYN’s from taking any possible action that might get them a malpractice suit.

Folks, you have no idea how bad it is for these doctors.  I had an OB-GYN as a patient, and she was saying that her malpractice insurance cost her medical group MORE THAN HER SALARY.  This is the kind of thing that leads to “defensive medicine”; in other words, ordering expensive tests and procedures to be done more to prevent a lawsuit than for any real medical need.

I can’t say that I blame them.  Doctors have bullseye targets on them from malpractice lawyers like you would not believe.  And with a lot of states refusing to enact tort reform (which limits how much a bloodsucking lawyer can hit you for), it’s only going to get worse.

However, doctors covering their butts can’t account for the insanely high C-section rate.  In 1996, the C-section rate was about 20%, which still seems awfully high to me.  A lot of those surgeries are being done for convenience (demanded for by the patient)  as much as anything else.

So, hopefully these new guidelines will help start a trend of reducing the number of unnecessary Casearians- after all, it’s always better to NOT get sliced up if you don’t have to.

Stay healthy!

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/health/22birth.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss