PDA: anesthesia prolongs the birth process
All content is checked by medical journalists.MunichQuick help against severe birth pains: For many women, the prospect of epidural anesthesia (PDA) is a reassuring idea. But the numbing effect of anesthesia in the back also has disadvantages. The expulsion phase of the birth is thus extended - and more than previously thought.
That was the result of an American study for which Dr. Yvonne W. Cheng of the University of California and her colleagues analyzed data from over 42,000 laboring women. The researchers compared the mean time it took to give birth with and without an epidural. The women had all given birth naturally - without a caesarean section - to their offspring.
Two more hours in the delivery room
The comparison shows that women “pay” for freedom from pain with a significantly longer stay in the delivery room. While first-time women without anesthesia spend an average of 197 minutes on the birth process, first-time women with PDAs take two hours and 19 minutes longer. The difference is even greater for women who have already given birth: With anesthesia, the birth takes 255 minutes - without PDA women have their baby in their arms on average after 81 minutes - a difference of almost three hours.
Labor pain eliminated
With the PDA, a thin tube is pushed into the lumbar area of the spinal canal under local anesthesia - the so-called epidural space. A pain reliever is injected through this catheter that targets the nerves running through it. This interrupts the transmission of pain from the region of the body supplied by these nerve roots to the brain. As a result, the women feel no pain in childbirth.
A well-known side effect is that this process extends the second phase of childbirth, the pressing of the child through the birth canal. So far, however, the experts had only assumed a delay of one hour. (lh)
Source: Yvonne Cheng et al., Second Stage of Labor and Epidural Use: A Larger Effect Than Previously Suggested, Obstetrics & Gynecology, 4 February 2014, doi: 10.1097 / AOG.0000000000000134
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