 Medically unnecessary cesarean section births: Introduction to a symposiumCarol Sakala Social Science & Medicine, 1993, vol. 37, issue 10, 1177-1198 Abstract: Between 1965 and 1986, the United States cesarean section rate increased from 4.5 to 24.1%. Increasingly, childbearing women and their advocates, along with many others, have recognized that a large proportion of cesareans confers a broad array of risks without providing any medical benefit. A growing literature examines the diverse causes of medically unnecessary cesareans and the diverse effects of surgical birth on women, infants, and families. Various programs and policies have been proposed or implemented to reduce cesarean rates. In recent decades, many other nations have also experienced a sharply escalating cesarean section rate. It is reasonable to conclude that a largely uncontrolled international pandemic of medically unnecessary cesarean births is occurring. The level of political, analytic, and programmatic activity that has occurred in the U.S. regarding medically unnecessary surgical births does not seem to be paralleled in other nations with sharply escalating rates. This symposium was organized with the objective of presenting the U.S. experience with various dimensions of the problem of medically unnecessary cesareans to an international audience. Although preliminary and inadequate, it is hoped that this experience will encourage policy leaders and investigators throughout the world to recognize and address the problem of run-away cesarean section births. The first section of this introduction summarizes the U.S. experience with medically unnecessary cesareans from the perpective of trends, causes, consequences, and solutions. The second section covers the same topics, presenting selected material from various other nations throughout the world. In the course of these overviews, I introduce the symposium's seven contributions, most of which focus on circumstances in the U.S. Keywords: cesarean; section; U.S.; cesarean; section; international; trends; cesarean; section; medically; unnecessary; cesarean; section; pandemic (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:37:y:1993:i:10:p:1177-1198 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.