Five-year study finds more women opt for C-section deliveries

Study by IIT Madras shows rise in C-sections in India, with private hospitals and older women at higher risk.

A study by the Indian Institute of Technology Madras found that there was a rise in the number of Caesarean sections (C-section) between 2016 and 2021 in the country. This, despite a drop in medical complications during pregnancy.

The chances of a delivery through C-section were greater if a woman gave birth in a private hospital, the study revealed. Also, overweight and older women (aged 35-49) were more likely to have C-section deliveries.

The institute’s Department of Humanities and Social Sciences conducted the research in Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh. The researchers included Varshini Neethi Mohan and P. Shirisha, research scholar Girija Vaidyanathan and a professor in the institute, V. R. Muraleedharan.

The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.

A C-section delivery, a surgical procedure, is generally recommended to save the life of the mother and the unborn infant. When not strictly necessary, however, it can cause several adverse health outcomes, lead to unnecessary expenditure, and place a strain on scarce public health resources, earlier researches have proved.

Factors that could contribute to adverse birth outcomes and possibly justify C-sections (such as the mother’s age being less than 18 years or greater than 34 years, the interval between births being less than 24 months or the child being the fourth or more born to the mother) are considered high-risk fertility behaviour.

In an in-depth analysis of Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh, the researchers found that though pregnancy complications and high-risk fertility behaviour were more prevalent in Chhattisgarh, C-section was more prevalent in Tamil Nadu.