“Since Cesareans not only are more lucrative than natural births, but also reduce the time the physician needs to attend to the laboring mother during birth, many physicians prefer Cesareans.”
How to fix the profit incentive that doctors have to engage in unnecessary C-Sections?
For like the 3 millionth time, US infant mortality is not high if birth registration, and birthweight, differences are taken into account.
The entry suggests that the author doesn’t spend much time reading the relevant literature. Which I guess should have been pretty easy to figure out, given that the reference cited is the CIA World Factbook.
Is U.S. infant mortality so high because mothers get too much medical care?
Nicholas Eberstadt has an interesting take on infant mortality rates. In his book The Tyranny of Numbers, he claims that low-birth weight babies below a certain size are routinely excluded from mortality rates and counted as miscarriages in some countries. This has a dramatic effect on infant mortality rates — babies who at birth die are typically low-birth weight.
“Routine fetal monitoring increases the incidence of interventions and inhibits the mother’s ability to do what is necessary to give birth physiologically. This routine is not justified for everyone by reliable research and is often the gateway to other highly questionable routines.”
I take this with a grain of salt. The monitoring simply provides more information; the doctor’s decisions after receiving the information are what lead to other interventions. This is not a reason to do away with fetal monitoring.
You’ve done it again. You have to look more closely at the sources. Two links away and it’s basically a home-birth crank advocacy site pushing MANA’s nonsense. You want to know what will kill more babies? Midwife delivery which is consistently shown to be 3-7 times more likely to result in neonatal mortality.
The reason for the higher infant mortality rates in this country are not due to intervention. Careful analyses of infant and maternal mortality by ACOG consistently shows that outside of things like patient disease, the big cause of neonatal mortality is failure to intervene. Also, they are pulling a trick on you with infant mortality as a statistic rather than neonatal mortality, which is more relevant to the discussion of interventions at birth whereas infant mortality has more to do with pediatric care and the way the US counts live births.
Now, why does the US have such a high infant mortality rate, even after accounting for these factors? The answer is, some states have a big problem, and others don’t. If you look at the rates for states like Massachusetts, New York, California, their infant mortality rate is superior or comparable to nations in the top 10 for this statistic 4.9-5.5 per thousand live births. Go play around on Kaiser’s state health facts website. Guess which states have infant mortality statistics on par with 3rd world nations? As you move South and towards the Mississippi you see the inexorable decline in survival. Mississippi 10.2, Louisiana 9.4, Alabama 9.5, etc. Almost twice the infant mortality that you find on the coasts and New England.
Why do you think that is? You think it’s more intervention? Not bloody likely.
Is U.S. infant mortality so high because mothers get too much medical care?\
The number of routine medical interventions the mother-to-be goes through should be the parents-to-be decision, not the physicians, or noone else for that matter.
What the ObamaCare individual mandate tax compliance form will probably look like.
So, basically, with this new mandate we are now going to be required, not asked, to disclose personal information, and eventually they will probably confiscate your property too. No more privacy. No more freedom.
The number of routine medical interventions the mother-to-be goes through should be the parents-to-be decision, not the physicians, or noone else for that matter.
I don’t recall anyone advocating physicians performing procedures on non-consenting patients. I believe that’s called battery.
Is U.S. infant mortality so high because mothers get too much medical care?
– Interesting view. I can see the foundation for his argument.
“Since Cesareans not only are more lucrative than natural births, but also reduce the time the physician needs to attend to the laboring mother during birth, many physicians prefer Cesareans.”
How to fix the profit incentive that doctors have to engage in unnecessary C-Sections?
For like the 3 millionth time, US infant mortality is not high if birth registration, and birthweight, differences are taken into account.
The entry suggests that the author doesn’t spend much time reading the relevant literature. Which I guess should have been pretty easy to figure out, given that the reference cited is the CIA World Factbook.
Too much medical care and interventions?
Kind of the same idea behind increased allergy rates…I’d say it warrants further research.
Is U.S. infant mortality so high because mothers get too much medical care?
Nicholas Eberstadt has an interesting take on infant mortality rates. In his book The Tyranny of Numbers, he claims that low-birth weight babies below a certain size are routinely excluded from mortality rates and counted as miscarriages in some countries. This has a dramatic effect on infant mortality rates — babies who at birth die are typically low-birth weight.
“Routine fetal monitoring increases the incidence of interventions and inhibits the mother’s ability to do what is necessary to give birth physiologically. This routine is not justified for everyone by reliable research and is often the gateway to other highly questionable routines.”
I take this with a grain of salt. The monitoring simply provides more information; the doctor’s decisions after receiving the information are what lead to other interventions. This is not a reason to do away with fetal monitoring.
This is a Scrivener’s error. The source material cites maternal mortality not infant mortality stats.
Dorothy Calabrese, M.D.
allergy-immunology.com San Clemente, CA
You’ve done it again. You have to look more closely at the sources. Two links away and it’s basically a home-birth crank advocacy site pushing MANA’s nonsense. You want to know what will kill more babies? Midwife delivery which is consistently shown to be 3-7 times more likely to result in neonatal mortality.
The reason for the higher infant mortality rates in this country are not due to intervention. Careful analyses of infant and maternal mortality by ACOG consistently shows that outside of things like patient disease, the big cause of neonatal mortality is failure to intervene. Also, they are pulling a trick on you with infant mortality as a statistic rather than neonatal mortality, which is more relevant to the discussion of interventions at birth whereas infant mortality has more to do with pediatric care and the way the US counts live births.
Now, why does the US have such a high infant mortality rate, even after accounting for these factors? The answer is, some states have a big problem, and others don’t. If you look at the rates for states like Massachusetts, New York, California, their infant mortality rate is superior or comparable to nations in the top 10 for this statistic 4.9-5.5 per thousand live births. Go play around on Kaiser’s state health facts website. Guess which states have infant mortality statistics on par with 3rd world nations? As you move South and towards the Mississippi you see the inexorable decline in survival. Mississippi 10.2, Louisiana 9.4, Alabama 9.5, etc. Almost twice the infant mortality that you find on the coasts and New England.
Why do you think that is? You think it’s more intervention? Not bloody likely.
Is U.S. infant mortality so high because mothers get too much medical care?\
The number of routine medical interventions the mother-to-be goes through should be the parents-to-be decision, not the physicians, or noone else for that matter.
So, basically, with this new mandate we are now going to be required, not asked, to disclose personal information, and eventually they will probably confiscate your property too. No more privacy. No more freedom.
I don’t recall anyone advocating physicians performing procedures on non-consenting patients. I believe that’s called battery.