The lovely Jill asked me if I could write up a guest post for The Unnecesarean - a review of this article on the effect of hospital type (community or university) on labor induction and cesarean rates.
I'm planning to work on a similar topic - the association between different hospital characteristics and their cesarean rates - for a lit review in my Perinatal Epidemiology class. I'm delighted to see articles that look at birth outcomes with exposures other than maternal factors. It'd be easier if every cesarean section were an obvious outcome of a medical or personal factor that made it necessary, but the data just doesn't bear this out. This kind of research is a great step toward figuring out what's going on with the rising c-section rates and I am particularly excited about this lit review because I don't think - fingers crossed, or I don't have a topic - it's been done before, and I love the idea that my classwork could actually mean something to someone.
(Also, my inner feminist is itching to shout 'stop blaming women!' from the rooftops. Guess what? Maybe the 33% cesarean rate isn't because we're fat, or old, or unhealthy.)
No comments:
Post a Comment