Just like with any type of abdominal surgery, giving birth via cesarean section comes with several risks including infection at the site of incision. A growing number of women, in the U.S., however, give birth via C-section and this often happens when unexpected problems arise during their supposedly normal delivery.
While wound complications may happen as a result of abdominal birth, a new study shows that how doctors close a woman's incision after giving birth via C-section can have an effect on her likelihood to experience wound problems after birth. Findings of the study suggest that women are less likely to have wound complications if doctors stitch rather than staple their incision.
For the study published in the June issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, Vincenzo Berghella, from the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, and colleagues randomly assigned 746 women who underwent cesarean delivery in three U.S hospitals between 2010 and 2012 to either have their incision closed via suture or staple.
The objective of the study was to compare the rate of wound complications between women who gave birth via C-section who had their incision stitched and those whose wounds were stapled. A 2013 study found that more than half of doctors opt for staples over sutures and among the reasons include ease of use and speed of procedure. On average, suturing takes 9 minutes longer to complete than stapling.
Despite doctors' preference for stapling incisions, the researchers found that women who had their incisions closed with stitches had 57 percent lesser risk of developing wound complications compared with women whose wounds were closed with staples.
Of the 376 women who had staples, 40 developed wound complications while only 18 in women who had stitches did. The researchers also observed that women whose wounds were stitched had 80 percent less likelihood of having their incisions re-open to size of at least 1 centimeter compared with women who had their incision stapled.
"Suture closure of the skin incision at cesarean delivery is associated with a 57% decrease in wound complications compared with staple closure," Berghella and colleagues concluded.
Based on the findings of their study, the researchers said that C-section incisions should be stitched rather than closed with staples.
"C-sections are a common procedure in the United States, and yet we still haven't established the best way to close these incisions," Berghella said. "Based on these results, we recommend that C-section incisions be closed with stitches rather than staples."
