For a woman with a large frame at 5'8 feet tall, Melek Speros, from Austin, Texas, was warned by her doctor in her first pregnancy that her pelvis might be very small for a vaginal or natural delivery. Surprised by the recommendation to undergo a caesarian operation or C-section, she asked her doctor - who then agreed - to try vaginal delivery by inducing labor eight days prior to her due date at St. David's South Austin Medical Center.
When it didn't work swiftly, the doctor again suggested C-section. Speros took his doctor's word that it would be unsafe for the baby to push through and so delivered her first son, and her second son two years later, by C-section. Surprisingly, on her third birthing, she delivered a healthy 9-pound baby boy.
While it's no surprise that mothers delivering their first baby via C-section are around 90 percent more prone to delivering again in the same manner, a new investigation however shows that many pregnant women are so trusting of their physicians and hospitals that they end up not realizing such trust sometimes may be misplaced.
The investigation conducted by Consumer Reports indicates that an extreme number of babies are coming out of their mothers' womb and entering this world via the C-section.
Dr. Elliot Main, who is the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative director, says some of these C-section cases are required for the mother's or baby's health, but the high C-section rates in hospitals with low score, from the investigation's data he analyzed, are "unsupportable by professional guidelines and studies of birth outcomes." Main is also formerly chairman at department of obstetrics and gynecology of the San Francisco's California Pacific Medical Center.
The Consumer Reports' Ratings show that rates for C-section differ dramatically even in neighboring hospitals. By low-risk deliveries, it means women who didn't have history of C-section and of premature deliveries and are carrying properly positioned babies.
For instance are hospitals in Los Angeles. At the Los Angeles Community Hospital, nearly 55 percent of pregnant women that are anticipating low-risk delivery still undergo C-section. California Hospital Medical Center has 15 percent rate of C-sections for low-risk deliveries, while Western Medical Center Anaheim has around 11 percent.
Another case is in El Paso, Texas. Sierra Medical Center has 37 percent of women with low-risk delivery undergoing C-section, while University Medical Center of El Paso has around 15 percent.
Colorado has similar figures. Denver Health Medical Center got a high score of around 8 percent of C-section, while neighboring Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center has low marks with rate at around 20 percent.
The investigation reveals that most of the families are not aware of enormous difference in the medical practice, and that it's generally considerably easier to discover hospitals with high rates of C-section than hospitals with low rates.
Of the more than 1,500 hospitals investigated from 22 states, the Ratings report shows that 66 percent got the lowest or the second-lowest scores, as compared to merely 12 percent of hospitals that got any of the two highest marks.
With the alarming figures coming out in public, many health organizations however are prioritizing to lower the rates of C-section, such as Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Consumer Reports says these two organizations teamed up to publish pioneering practice guidelines that aim to further prevent uncalled-for C-section deliveries in the US.
