Cesarean section rates for low-risk deliveries are 4.7 times lower than for deliveries that had a medical indication for the procedure listed in the record, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The C-section rate for non–low-risk deliveries (deliveries with a medical indication that excluded them from the low-risk category) was 76.1% in 2013, compared with 16.2% for low-risk deliveries. Conversely, 23.9% of non–low-risk deliveries that year were performed vaginally, compared with 83.8% of low-risk deliveries, the AHRQ reported.
Of the more than 3.5 million deliveries that took place in the almost-nationwide study population in 2013, just under 1 million (28.2%) were considered non–low risk. By type of delivery, almost 65% of the 1.2 million cesareans performed were non–low risk deliveries, compared with only 10% of the nearly 2.4 million vaginal deliveries, the AHRQ noted.
The AHRQ analysis combined a new definition of low-risk delivery developed by the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2016;214[2]:153-63) with data from the State Inpatient Databases of 43 states and the District of Columbia. This approach allowed AHRQ researchers to apply the new definition to actual counts of deliveries from 2,719 hospitals – representing 95% of the population – instead of national estimates based on a much smaller sample.
