Why are C-section births soaring? officials ask

WASHINGTON - Federal health officials released some interesting data yesterday aimed at trying to figure out why so many U.S. women are undergoing Caesarean sections to deliver their babies.

The rate at which women are having C-sections has soared in recent years. About one-third of all babies are delivered using the surgical procedure. C-sections are necessary sometimes to save the baby or the mother or both.

But experts think they're being done far too frequently, putting both the woman and her baby at unnecessary risk, making the mother's recovery a lot harder and adding a lot of extra costs to the nation's health-care bill.

In the new analysis, published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, researchers at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development analyzed data collected at 19 hospitals about 228,668 births that occurred between 2002 and 2008.

Overall, the researches found that about a third of the deliveries were by C-section. Surprisingly, however, that was even the case for women giving birth for the first time - not because they had previously had a C-section, which can make trying regular labor riskier. Slightly more than one-third of first-time moms had C-sections.

Also surprising was the fact that half of the women attempting regular births had their labor induced. And half of C-sections occurred in women who had been induced but had not even dilated 6 centimeters. That suggests that doctors may be jumping the gun and turning to a C-section too early.

It also might support the idea that part of the problem might be that women and their doctors are scheduling their deliveries for convenience.

But none of this proves any of that. It could be that a lot of these C-sections are needed because of problem pregnancies.

More women are giving birth at older ages, when complications are more common. More obese women are also giving birth. Obese women are more prone to complications.

About one-third of the C-sections were among women who had had a previous C-section. And among those who tried a C-section again even though they had already had one, they were successful in about 57 percent of the cases.

The researchers stress that the study can't determine exactly how many of the C-sections were really unnecessary and could have been avoided.

But the study does provide new evidence that more could be done to avoid women getting C-sections the first time around, and more could at least try a regular birth, even if they have had a previous C-section.