Huge increase in Scottish Caesarean’s
Filed under: Baby public health — Alan @ 8:51 am
Figures out yesterday show that there are three times as many Scottish babies born via a Caesarean than there were 30 years ago, with more than one in ten women choosing to have the surgery during birth.
Out of all the births in Scotland, an additional 15.2% of births required an emergency Caesarean section.
The new report also showed that from March 2008- March 2009 there were 56,281 births, which is an increase of almost 2,000 babies from the year before. Out of these births a little more than a quarter was Caesareans.
Of these 10.7% of the births were elective surgeries, by women who already knew they would have a Caesarean due to the fact that they knew they would be having more than one baby, or for clinical reasons, such as a child that was in the breech position making a natural birth difficult.
This is a stark contrast to 1976 when only 8.6% of all births required surgeries out of which only 4.6% were electives and 3.9% were electives.
Also reflected in the figures is the fact that many of the babies were born to older mothers in the age range of 30 to 34 making up 70% of all the births in 2008. In contrast, in 1976 only 12% of mothers who gave birth fell into the same age range.
Additionally, there were 1,960 babies born to woman who were over age 40 in 2008 which is more than double the amount born to older women in 1976 (813).
Also, the study showed that women who lived in poor areas had more than double the risk of low birth rate babies compared to mothers in better economical areas with women.
Along the same vein, the average age of a mother from an affluent area was 32 while the average age from deprived economic areas was 19.
Caesarean Birth
