The effect of initiating neuraxial analgesia service on the rate of cesarean delivery in Hubei, China: a 16-month retrospective study

Abstract

Abstract Background No Pain Labor &Delivery (NPLD) is a nongovernmental project to increase access to safe neuraxial analgesia through specialized training. This study explores the change in overall cesarean delivery (CD) rate and maternal request CD(MRCD) rate in our hospital after the initiation of neuraxial analgesia service (NA). Methods NA was initiated in May 1st 2015 by the help of NPLD. Since then, the application of NA became a routine operation in our hospital, and every parturient can choose to use NA or not. The monthly rates of NA, CD, MRCD, multiparous women, intrapartum CD, episiotomy, postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), operative vaginal delivery and neonatal asphyxia were analyzed from January 2015 to April 2016. Results The rate of NA in our hospital was getting increasingly higher from 26.1% in May 2015 to 44.6% in April 2016 (p 0.05), then decreased from 50.4% in May 2015 to 36.3% in April 2016 (p 0.05), then decreased from 10.8% in May 2015 to 5.7% in April 2016 (p 0.05). There was a negative correlation between the rate of NA and rate of overall CD, r = − 0.782 (95%CI [− 0.948, − 0.534], p0.05). Conclusions Our study shows that the rates of CD and MRCD in our department were significantly decreased from May 1st 2015 to April 30th 2016, which may be due to the increasing use of NA during vaginal delivery with the help of NPLD.

Keywords

• Neuraxial labor analgesia
• Cesarean delivery
• Maternal request cesarean delivery