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Pain relief in labour
Author(s) -
Reynolds Felicity
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
bjog: an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.157
H-Index - 164
eISSN - 1471-0528
pISSN - 1470-0328
DOI - 10.1111/j.1471-0528.1993.tb15137.x
Subject(s) - citation , history , library science , computer science
Both among women having babies and among those caring for them, views about the need for pain relief in labour are often remarkably divergent. Some women may request epidural analgesia as their first choice while others would prefer to overcome pain by almost any other means and only request epidural analgesia if all else fails. Anaesthetists tend to believe that women in the latter category have been misguided. For equally anecdotal reasons others believe that epidural analgesia is an unnecessary encumbrance, causing a cascade of intervention and complication (Kitzinger 1987). Though both these views are valid, we have not hitherto known which better represents the majority position in Britain. The National Birthday Trust (NBT) now publish the findings of a nationwide survey of pain and its relief in childbirth carried out during one week in 1990 (Chamberlain et al. 1993). Information was provided on 4516 women labouring with singleton pregnancies in 282 units. The data are revealing and give more support to the anaesthetists’ view than might have been anticipated.