Giuseppe Loverro, Pantaleo Greco, Antonella Vimercati, V. Nicolardi, G. Varcaccio-Garofalo, Luigi Selvaggi
Maternal complications associated with cesarean section
Objective: To assess the prevalence of cesarean section
(CS) related maternal complications and to evaluate
post-CS complications in relationship with relative risk
factors.
Method: 3010 patients who had a CS in the University
Hospital of Bari during the period 1988–98 were retrospectively
included into the study and 1007 women delivered
vaginally at the same institution and in the same
period of time, were randomly selected as the control
group. For each single patient delivered by CS, the
following risk factors were taken into account: age, parity,
pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), and any disease
antedating pregnancy or diagnosed during pregnancy.
Additionally, therapeutic procedures such as
blood transfusion, number of days in hospital, and admission
into intensive care were followed. The prevalence
of puerperal complications was assessed for vaginal
deliveries and CS by Student's t-test and a correlation
of CS complications with risk factors was performed
by multivariate analysis.
Results: In the cohort of abdominal delivery, puerperal
complications were significantly more frequent compared
with those following vaginal delivery (p < 0.05).
In the group of CS, obese women have higher prevalence
of maternal complications, particularly hypertension
and intestinal complications (p < 0.05).
Conclusion: Compared with vaginal delivery, CS delivery
carries a higher number of postpartum complications,
and the higher rate is mainly related to obesity.
Journal of Perinatal Medicine, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 1619-3997
Volume: 29, 08/2001
Pages: 322 - 326
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