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C-section births rise rapidly to more than 20 percent worldwide
Rates of caesarean section births almost doubled between 2000 and 2015 – from 12 to 21 percent worldwide - new research has found, with the life-saving surgery unavailable to many women in poor countries while often over-used in richer ones.
The research, published in The Lancet medical journal on Thursday, found that 60 percent of countries overuse C-sections and 25 percent under-use them, suggesting that recommendations for their use in cases of medical need are widely ignored.
In at least 15 countries, more than 40 percent of all babies born are delivered by C-section. The highest rate, of 58.1 percent, was in the Dominican Republic.
Experts estimate that between 10 and 15 percent of births medically require a C-section due to complications such as bleeding, foetal distress, hypertension or a baby being in an abnormal position.
While the procedure can save lives - of both mothers and newborns - it can also create complications and side effects, including higher risks for future births.
"The large increases in C-section use – mostly in richer settings for non-medical purposes – are concerning because of the associated risks for women and children," said Marleen Temmerman, an expert from Aga Khan University in Kenya and Ghent University in Belgium who co-led the research.
Also at BBC, EurekAlert!, The Guardian, and Voice of America.
Global epidemiology of use of and disparities in caesarean sections (DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31928-7) (DX)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @09:08PM (10 children)
Various common procedures lead to this. Epidurals slow labor. Drugs then speed labor, overdoing it before the cervix has softened. Opiates impact fetal heart rate. Continuous monitoring causes excess alarm over trivial normal variation. Oh no, we must do a C-section!
If the C-section causes serious problems, it will likely be with a future birth. Years from now, some other doctor can deal with that. There won't be a lawsuit reaching back in time.
So with the later birth, the placenta grows into the scar and makes a mess of things. The placenta may partly detach before it ought to detach, then fail to fully detach when it ought to detach. There might be loss of a baby or loss of a uterus. The woman is also much less likely to have another child and slightly more likely to die.
There is no way I could have my family via C-section. I didn't plan to have 11 kids, but I did. Imagine 11 giant scars. My wife has none. With a C-section, my family choice would have been stolen from me before I even knew I wanted a huge family.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @09:18PM
Not sure if you're doing that for lulz or because you make money off unnecessary surgery, but fuck off either way.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday October 12 2018, @09:33PM (7 children)
Holy fuck. 11 kids?! How have you not hung yourself?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @10:24PM
Another AC here.
The same could be said of un-sterilized cats. 1 is more than enough, how can you have 11? or 12?
Some people do. The people with 11 kids are at an evolutionary advantage. The people with 11 cats have cats with an evolutionary advantage.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @10:29PM (1 child)
The sort of religious crazies that have a dozen kids are the sort of religious crazies who aren't allowed to hang themselves; apparently 11 kids are still slightly less bad than Actual Hell, Now With Extra Brimstone.
But GP isn't a religious crazy, just a miserable troll; stop feeding him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @10:41PM
I'm not a religious crazy.
Maybe my wife is one: Birth control is a sin. Spilling your seed is a sin. Refusing to have sex with your spouse is a sin.
I may have sinned, but obviously not with any consistency.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @10:32PM (1 child)
Some people rebuild old cars. Some people grow giant pumpkins. Some people write open source software. Some people try to visit every country. Some people make people.
We might have a few more.
It gets noisy and messy, and we can't have nice things due to damage. Oh well. We can afford it, being in non-urban low-tax USA with a tech job.
My house is a zoo. The babies are really cute.
...
To address the rude anon who said "religious idiots who have a dozen kids in the modern era", we're not idiots. We just have a different value system. She got through calculus-based statistics and physics, as did I. We're an atheist-Catholic pair. Somebody needs to produce kids. The average leftist produces only about 1.5 in the USA, which is how you get extinction and how you justify the "need" to import people who hate us. I'm producing future workers right here in America. MAGA. My kids were out on a bridge last week holding anti-abortion signs, so maybe you would call them religious idiots... but the oldest 4 have all passed the AP Biology test, including one at age 11, all via homeschooling. Oh, I made an Eagle scout, and more are on the way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @11:08PM
I dislike what you stand for, but your policy of pumping out as many kids as possible can be a good idea. You can indoctrinate them or at least influence their views. You could employ them, and they could support you or your work. Your household level choice to have many children does not matter at all on the macro level, where birth rates are in decline.
The requirement of a wife or a female to give birth will soon be gone. Two men could start their own clan of indoctrinated children using artificial wombs to grow them. Or a man and a woman could have children without the need for the woman to physically give birth. Or a man could just grow designer babies without a partner.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @11:31PM (1 child)
Different AC here. I've got 8 of my own (cue theme song to "Eight is Enough"), and you learn the patience you need to handle it. It also helps that human memory tends to emphasize the highs and minimize the lows. [sciencedirect.com] Seriously, Matt Inman's not wrong about parenthood being gross; most parents joke that if children weren't so cute they wouldn't survive the terrible twos. No one is really ever ready to have kids, you just make a leap of faith and figure it out as you go.
It's worth it, though. There's a lot of fulfillment to be had in helping a person (that you helped make!) grow into a functioning member of society. If you decide it's not for you, that's fine. If you're speaking out of ignorance (i.e. never having been a parent), maybe you should be a bit less judgy of people who enjoy parenthood and are having a good experience with it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @11:43PM
8-is-enough here again; I owe you an apology, I forgot who I was talking to. You know exactly what I'm talking about with the kids being gross and stressful, best of luck with your family.
For what it's worth, there's a big change in family dynamics that happens when you get to your 5th kid: built-in babysitters. A 12-year-old can watch the others while parents go out on a date and enjoy an uninterrupted conversation at a linguistic level above 6th grade. They start pulling their own weight, which takes a big load off the parents. This totally makes up for the fact that there are more of them than you have arms between two parents.
What you're doing is harder than what I'm doing, and you have my sympathy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 13 2018, @05:48AM
God Bless you.
My wife worked out, and did special exercises right up to birth. Once her water broke and we got her to the hospital, she was already 8 CM and epidoral was out of the question. She gave perfectly natural birth with no fuss within the hour. Hoping for repeat performance for the second one :)