Re:Medical error is third biggest cause of death in the US, ...
by thrownaway2424 on Wednesday May 04, 2016 @03:52PM
(#11631191)
Sure they aren't the majority, but even having 25% of births be primary cesarean is ridiculous. The rate of cesarean for low-risk births is driven by policy, tradition, and unfortunately also profit motive. Simple changes in policy have dramatic influence on the cesarean rate, which strongly implies that the procedures were not medically indicated. For example the rate of cesareans for ordinary full-term, low-risk births in the US declined 6 percentage points after 2009, simply because the ACOG put out a statement about them. WHO says that the rate should be 15%, leaving half of US cesareans unexplained by medical necessity.
I never said it wasn't real I simply said it's in a minority of cases because it is. I've met dozens of OBGYNs who all think needless c-sections are simply unethical and who would never do them. But just as your experience mine is yet another anecdote.
c-sections in general are not a majority of births. Needless ones should be a subset of that (though because of the way reporting is done it's hard to determine which ones are and are not needless).