More pregnant women wait for their full-term to be completed before opting for c-sections, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The center reported that the overall rate of the c-section delivery is still the same at 31 percent but there were changes on the date when it is performed. They looked at the data between 2009 and 2011 for their analysis.
Early term c-section delivery rate dropped by four percent while full term c-section deliver rate increased by three percent. Children born between 39 and 40 weeks are considered full term. These trends remained constant even after the researchers took into consideration the age and ethnicity of the pregnant women.
These changes may be attributed to the recommendations given by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other studies that associated early term c-sections to increased complications and mortality for the newborn.
"Each additional week of pregnancy [before full-term] is very important," said study researcher Michelle Osterman, a health statistician at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics in an interview with LiveScience.
While it is good news that women are now waiting for their full term to deliver, the researchers are still concerned about the rate of c-sections. It used to be at 60 percent between 1996 and 2009 and though it had dropped almost half of it, 31 percent is still high according to experts.
"We're glad that they're being born later, but it would be better if they were being born by spontaneous vaginal delivery," rather than c-section, said Dr. Edward McCabe, chief medical officer of the March of Dimes, when asked by LiveScience for a medical opinion. "We need to work to get the overall cesarean rate decreasing," McCabe said.
C-sections are riskier than vaginal delivery since it is a surgery.
