Manitoba’s C-section rate among lowest in country, report says

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This article was published 18/04/2018 (2199 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba continues to have one of the lowest caesarean section rates across the country, according to a new report from the Canadian Institute for Health Information.

Less than a quarter of hospital deliveries in Manitoba in 2017 were by C-section as compared with British Columbia, which led the country, delivering 35 per cent of its hospital-born babies by C-section.

The totals do not surprise Mary-Jane Seager, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s medical director in charge of women’s health.

Manitoba’s rates have always been lower, in part because most obstetrical services are clustered in Winnipeg, with some in Brandon and a little more in Thompson, she said.

“When you get into more remote areas with less resources around you, it’s harder to continue a labour longer and safely have a nice baby and a nice mom at the end,” Seager said.

While the Manitoba rate could be lower, the province is probably around the “sweet spot,” she said, noting between 20 per cent and 23 per cent — Manitoba clocked in at 23.4 per cent — is probably where modern obstetrics should be in a well-resourced environment.

It’s also tricky to analyze the numbers too closely without digging into the circumstances of each and every C-section to find out which ones might not have been necessary, Seager acknowledged.

What she found most surprising about the 2017 numbers was Manitoba’s low rate of hospital births using forceps or vacuum extraction. Ten per cent of vaginal births used the assistance of forceps or a vacuum last year, as compared with 13 per cent countrywide.

Typically, when the rate of C-section increases, the rate of assisted vaginal births declines and vice versa.

“We’ve always sort of had a reputation in Manitoba of having a fairly high rate of vacuums and forceps, yet we seem to have a bit of a lower rate, so that was a bit surprising to me,” Seager said.

It isn’t immediately clear why.

“I guess we’ll have to dive into the data a little bit deeper,” she said.

jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca