The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the United Kingdom has issued new guidelines on caesarean sections. The latest draft guidelines feature several new recommendations, including –
1. Women who have had up to and including four caesarean sections should be informed that their risk of fever, bladder injuries, surgical injuries and rupture of the womb is the same with a planned CS as it is with planned vaginal delivery.
2. Women should be offered prophylactic antibiotics to reduce the risk of possible post-operative infections before the skin incision is made.
3. When a women requests a CS because of her fear of childbirth, she should be offered a referral to a health care professional with expertise in providing prenatal mental health to help her address her fears in a supportive manner. If after providing support, a vaginal birth is still not an acceptable option to the woman, offer a planned CS.
4. The condition of the woman and the unborn baby should be taken into account when making decisions about rapid delivery. It should be remembered that rapid delivery may be harmful in certain circumstances. For this reason, the recommended decision –to- delivery intervals should be used as audit standards only to measure the overall performance of an obstetric unit. They should not be used to judge multi disciplinary team performance for any individual CS.
Liam Moloney, Solicitor said today “rates of caesarean sections have been rising in developed Countries over the past 4 decades. Recent evidence shows that a caesarean section is not necessarily the best course of action in some cases, for instance, where the mother has had previous caesareans or where the mother is HIV positive”.
