Flutterby™! : Pregnancy related deaths 2010-02-03 21:58:49.075967+00

Pregnancy related deaths

2010-02-03 21:58:49.075967+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

This morning I was driving to pick up a friend to take her to an appointment at the UCSF dental clinic, and I heard about this. Then Reka linked to it: Women dying from pregnancy related issues may have tripled in California over the last decade, and there may be a similar rise nationally.

That's 95 women out of an overall human population in California of under 38 million, so it's nothing like car crashes or people dying from smog leaking into the Central Valley from the LA basin, but a trend like that deserves a little look. One doctor thinks it may be related to labor induced before term, which doubles the chance of a C-section:

On average, a C-section brings in twice the revenue of a vaginal birth. Today, the C-section is the single most common surgical procedure performed in the United States.

Well, the impression I got was that it was people they interviewed, who, lacking any other evidence, blamed evil doctors. If you look at the comments section the C-Section explanation went from nowhere to the scientific concensus in about 3 posts.

I'm not sure if it was the author or the people they'd interviewed. It looks pretty clear that people saw the "whoah, what the hell?" number and are trying to go back and figure out why the hell, there's a bunch of speculation, but no hard numbers yet.

Here's another thing: How many of those 95 woment had a C-section? The complete lack of that statistic in the item makes me believe the author had another agenda.

Yes, C-sections do bring in more money, but they also cost more to perform, and any surgery increases risks, no matter what it is. Maybe the thing to look at is the decision making process. How many OBs were sued for not providing C-sections when the first sign of trouble appeared, and the baby died? How many C-sections were planned from the beginning, and how many were done at the last minute?