Caesareans lead to risk of having a still birth

Thanks to NOR

Caesareans lead to risk of having a still birth
By Celia Hall, Medical Editor
Last Updated: 2:27am GMT 14/02/2007

An excerpt:

Women who have had a baby by caesarean have a higher risk of a still birth in a later pregnancy an audit of thousands of births has revealed.

Although the increase in risk is small, the number of women having caesareans has now risen to above 23 per cent, approximately twice as many as when the births in the study were taking place.

The study of nearly 82,000 live and still births, where the mother had previously had a caesarean, found a stillborn rate of 4.6 per 1,000 births compared with 3.5 per 1,000 in woman who had not had a previous baby by caesarean operation.

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The data came from records of women in Oxfordshire and West Berkshire who had babies between 1968 and 1989 and the study is reported in the Journal of the Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

The researchers believe the caesarean may affect the formation of the placenta in a subsequent pregnancy so that it does not function properly.

Dr Ron Gray and colleagues from the department of public health at Oxford University, say that still births happen for many reasons but they believe four per cent in the study could have been caused by a previous caesarean.

Dr Gray says that because of the increase in caesareans the four per cent figure could now be higher.

"These findings suggest that caesarean section in one pregnancy slightly increases the risk of still birth in following pregnancies," Dr Gray said.

"This is now the fourth study of this kind to have shown an increase risk.

"We would suggest that further research is required to understand why this is happening. In the meantime clinicians and women need to be aware of the increased risk but also that the risk is small.