Word: anesthesia
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Each year about 700,000 women in the U.S. get their tubes tied, with the surgeries typically requiring general anesthesia, a hospital stay and a week of recovery. But according to Millennium Research Group, there are plenty of women who are done having kids but don't want to go under the knife. The health-care data firm projects the female-sterilization market will more than triple, from $80 million in 2007 to $245 million, by 2012, as these women opt for quick fixes like Essure that can cost patients as little as a doctor's visit...
Tourist Jack Golden remembers a recent trip to China for all the wrong reasons. Golden, of Lenox, Mass., had a prostate condition that required medical treatment during a Yangtze River cruise. He had to endure an invasive procedure without anesthesia at a small, gritty hospital in Fengdu, an ancient city on the river's north bank. And that was the easy part. "The Chinese accept it because this is what they have," he says...
When doctors first ordered a CT scan for Jen Houck's six-month-old daughter in 2003, the new mom was more worried about the risks of anesthesia (used to keep children from squirming in the machine) than of radiation exposure. In 2006 and 2007, her daughter, now 5, had two additional CT scans, 6 months apart, for what doctors initially thought was a growth abnormality. They've since determined the child was perfectly healthy. "All that, just to find out her head is bigger than normal," says the 27-year-old mother of two in Boone, North Carolina...
Nowhere in your rosy article about elective caesareans do you discuss the risks of the operation: anesthesia side effects, infection, mistakes made during the operation, longer recovery, time lost from work for family members needed to support a mother who can't pick up or carry her new baby, etc. You discuss the cost of lawsuits to doctors who don't perform the operation but neglect to mention the cost to insurance companies or public funds when a caesarean is done--a cost significantly higher than for a vaginal birth with or without medication. I would expect a higher level...
...sections can certainly be attributed to women with routine pregnancies, like Chung, who make a pragmatic decision to keep their deliveries just as uneventful. Preliminary data suggest that such cases account for anywhere from 4% to 18% of the total number of caesareans. On the medical side, better anesthesia and antibiotics are making the procedure safer. Add to that the growing number of women delaying childbirth, those having twins or triplets as a result of in vitro fertilization and America's exploding obesity epidemic--all of which increase the risks of vaginal delivery. Doctors are also becoming better at picking...