Tropical Medicine & Surgery

Abstract

Pregnant Women View Regarding Cesarean Section in Northwest Pakistan

Qudsia Qazi, Zubaida Akhtar, Kamran Khan and Amer Hayat Khan

Objective: Cesarean Section (CS) is a commonly performed procedure for women, with almost a third of women in many developed countries experiencing when they give birth. CS is still being perceived as an abnormal means of delivery by many antenatal women in remote areas of Pakistan. Aim of the study is to determine the perceptions of antenatal clients in the North West of Pakistan on CS.
Materials and methods: A self-administered questionnaire based survey was designed. Subjects were enrolled from September 2009 to December 2009 in Women and Children Teaching Hospital Bannu, Pakistan. Pre-validated, self-developed questionnaire was used for study data. The data was fed to Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS 16®) to analyze and presented in a simple frequency table.
Results: Of 450 pregnant patients, 402 responded the questionnaire. Age of the respondents ranged between 16 and 44 (27.21 ± 4.04) years. Only 7 (1.7%) viewed CS as feasible and elected to undergo CS. Seventy one (17.6%) considered CS good in case of threat to their lives, whereas 195 (48.6%) didn’t accept CS in any circumstances. Only 35 (8.7%) women viewed CS uncomfortable in context of cultural barrier and a curse for women.
Conclusion: Present study affirms previous suspicion that a significant proportion of antenatal clients are averse to CS and the negative cultural perception of the people to CS reinforced present aversion.