Causes of cesarean section performed in an educational health care center in Rasht city

Cesarean section is the most common surgery among women. According to World Health Organization, the rate of cesarean section in each area should not exceed 10 –15 percent. In our country, one of the targets in maternal health program is reducing the rate of unnecessary cesarean delivery to 25 percent by 2015. This study was designed to determine the causes recorded by the physician to perform a cesarean section in an educational - care center in Rasht/Iran. In this descriptive study, we used a questionnaire based on the particular research setting to collect the necessary data according to physicians’written statements from 600 cases via a simple random sampling in a referral educational health care center specialist in obstetrics and gynecology in Rasht. Data were analyzed by using statistical software and descriptive statistics. The highest frequency of cesarean section was in the age group 20-29 years. 83 percent of mothers had their first or second pregnancy. In this educational center 63.38 percent of deliveries were performed by Caesarean during 2004 and 2005. The most common causes recorded by the physician to perform a cesarean section were respectively fetal distress (42.7%), repeated cesarean section(20.3%), cephalopelvic disproportion(10.7%), meconium stained (8.2%), breech presentation(7.5%), placenta previa(1.8%) and lack of progress in labor(1.8%). The findings of this study showed that the frequency of cesarean section in this center in 2004 and 2005 was high compared with the standards. It seems that the study of causes of cesarean and its results may help the authorities to plan some strategies on behalf of reducing the number of unnecessary cesarean birth.