C-sections rates surging
Sometimes it is impossible to avoid delivering a baby by cesarean section, but the high rate of surgical deliveries in America has many doctors worried. C-sections are major abdominal surgeries that can cause life-threatening problems, leading many to think they should be avoided unless the health of the mother or child is at risk.
Now comes a study in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology showing that 30.5 percent of U.S. births are now by c-section, including nearly one in three deliveries to first-time mothers.
An Inquirer analysis found that the eight-county Philadelphia region's rate was an even higher 34.3 percent, compared with 21 percent a decade earlier.
The 2008 rates varied widely among local hospitals, ranging from 28 percent at Hahnemann University Hospital and the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania to 44 percent for Virtua Health's Voorhees hospital and 42 percent at Main Line Health's Lankenau hospital in Wynnewood.
Federal researchers examined data at 19 hospitals, including the Christiana Care Health System in Delaware, to discern why rates had spiked 50 percent in the last decade.
The most common reason was a previous c-section delivery that left a uterine scar. Another factor was having labor induced by drugs. Those women had twice the cesarean rate as those with spontaneous labor. And older women also had high rates.
The researchers concluded that greater effort was needed to reduce the number of first-time deliveries by c-section. And "increasing vaginal birth after previous cesarean is urgently needed."
Penn study links violence and ER visits for asthma
People who witness violent acts go to the emergency room and are hospitalized for asthma more than twice as often as similar asthmatics who see no violent acts. So concludes a study by University of Pennsylvania researchers that followed 397 adults with moderate to severe asthma for six months.
Those who had lower "asthma-related" quality of life had also seen fights with weapons, a gang fight, a sexual assault, robbery, or mugging, among other episodes.
"Our findings suggest that exposure to violence is associated with far-reaching health effects beyond the single condition of asthma," said Andrea J. Apter, the lead author of the study.