CANBERRA Hospital will update its prenatal education program after a landmark new medical study found Australia's ageing first-time mothers have sent the nation's rates of caesarean section births soaring.
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Overweight and obese new mothers are driving the massive growth in section births. The findings have prompted researchers to call for a rethink on attitudes to first births and fertility.
The hospital's clinical director of obstetrics and gynaecology, Steven Adair, said the hospital would use the study to help manage older women's expectation about the likelihood of intervention during labour.
The ACT has the oldest first-time mothers in the nation, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics. The median age for first-time mothers in the ACT was 30, while the national average is 28.9 years.
''What this does is allow us to say to older mums pre-pregnancy or in early pregnancy, these expectations might not be realistic because of this research from South Australia,'' Dr Adair said. ''If you can talk about expectations realistically, it's a safe place to be.''
Dr Adair said his unit reviewed every birth at the hospital on a weekly basis.
''We look at how the baby is born and the safety of the mother and baby. For every birth that isn't a spontaneous birth, we ask the question, 'was there anything in safe practice we could do to have avoided intervention', but my primary goal is the safety of mothers and babies.''
Chief Minister Katy Gallagher says she expects decisions about caesarean sections to be made with the health of the mother and child as priority, and there was no cap or target for c-sections at Canberra Hospital.
''I expect people running our service to do whatever is safe to get a healthy mother and baby at the end of it - if that means the c-section rate goes up, it goes up,'' she said.
The research, published in the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, looked at the first births of more than 117,000 mothers in South Australia over a 20-year period. The mother's age was found to be a factor in three-quarters of caesarean interventions, casting doubt on the theory that decision-making by doctors was the main reason for the jump in caesarean rates.
The rate of c-sections in Australian births rose from 18 per cent of the total in 1991 to more than 31 per cent in 2010, an increase of more than 75 per cent.
The reasons for the increase have been unclear until now, and the researchers noted that efforts to reduce the incidence of caesareans have largely failed.
