The percentage of mothers who deliver their babies by cesarean section - and don't medically need it - is declining in the U.S, according to a new report.
Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at the rates of low-risk c-sections in between 1990 and 2013 throughout the country. A low-risk c-section is considered a c-section performed when there is still a relatively low risk to the mother's or baby's health compared to giving birth vaginally, reports Live Science.
When a c-section is considered high-risk there is a much greater medical-necessity. Most c-sections performed in the U.S, however, are low-risk, according to Live Science.
There was a recent push for the rate of low medical-necessity c-sections to decrease when the statistics from 1996-2009 showed that there was a 60 percent increase in these c-sections, Live Science reports.
"I question why we would perform an additional 440,000 open surgeries on women without evidence of benefit," Caughey told Live Science in an email. "Thus, part of the focus [on lowering the c-section rate] is an effort to make sure we are doing medically-indicated cesareans, and that our indications [for doing the surgery] have a basis in the evidence."
