EPIDURALS PROTECT KEY MUSCLES IN LABOUR, STUDY SUGGESTS
Baku, August 26 (AZERTAC). Having an epidural during labour may protect key muscles and therefore cut the risk of incontinence in later life, a study of nearly 400 women suggests.
Research in the BJOG, the leading obstetrics journal, found more than one in ten women who had vaginal births suffered damage to the "levator" muscles which hold up internal organs. A third of those who had a forceps delivery suffered some muscle trauma.
But overall women who had the spinal analgesia ran a lower risk of damage. Injury to the pelvic muscles during childbirth is known to be a key risk factor for organ prolapse. Women who have given birth once are four times more likely to require hospital attention because of prolapse than those who have no children, and those with two vaginal births eight times more likely.
Prolapse occurs when the pelvic muscles become so weak the organs they support - such as the bladder and the uterus - begin to drop down. Symptoms vary, but can include sexual problems as well as both urinary and faecal incontinence - or conversely chronic constipation, depending on how the muscles are affected. There are a number of means to manage this, with surgery usually the most effective long-term option. The team from the Nepean Clinical School of Medicine in Sydney followed up 367 women who gave birth between 2005 and 2008.
Over a third had undergone either a planned or emergency Caesarean section, and there were no cases of muscle damage or tearing among these women. Of those who had delivered their baby vaginally, about 13% were found to have some damage. The risk of muscle tearing was slightly lower among those whose birth had been assisted with a ventouse - a suction cup which fits on the baby`s head - than those who did not have an assisted delivery.
