Preventing the First Cesarean Delivery

With more than one third of pregnancies in the United States being delivered by cesarean and the growing knowledge of morbidities associated with repeat cesarean deliveries, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists convened a workshop to address the concept of preventing the first cesarean delivery. The available information on maternal and fetal factors, labor management and induction, and nonmedical factors leading to the first cesarean delivery was reviewed as well as the implications of the first cesarean delivery on future reproductive health. Key points were…