Women spending less time in NHS hospitals after giving birth by Caesarean section

Women are spending less time in NHS hospitals after giving birth by Caesarean section compared to previous years, a report by The NHS Information Centre shows today (September 25 2008).

Just over a quarter (27,407) spent four days or more recovering in hospital in 2006-07, compared to just under a third (31,393) in 2005-06.

According to the report, NHS Maternity Statistics, England 2006-07, most women who had instrumental deliveries spent one or two days recovering in hospital in 2006-07, while most women who had spontaneous deliveries spent one day or less.

Other key findings for 2006-07 were:

  • The number of deliveries taking place in NHS hospitals increased by 2.9 per cent (629,207) compared to 2005-06 (611,337).
  • The caesarean rate remained stable at just over 24 per cent, more than half of which were emergency caesareans.
  • More than half (52 per cent) of labours were estimated to not include an epidural, surgical intervention, use of instruments, induction or spinal or general anaesthetic. Around a third of women had an epidural, spinal or general anaesthetic.
  • More than 20 per cent of labours were induced, while 11.5 per cent of deliveries were instrumental.
  • 44 per cent of white women's babies weighed more than 3.5kg, compared with 34 per cent of black women's babies and 23 per cent of Asian women's babies.

NHS Chief Executive Tim Straughan said: “Our figures show the timescale from a woman giving birth to heading home from hospital with their new baby is reducing. It is interesting to note the increase in the number of NHS hospital births compared to the decrease in time from the delivery room to discharge.”

A full copy of the report is at: www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/maternity0607

ENDS

Notes to editors

  1. The NHS Information Centre is England's authoritative, independent source of health and social care information. It works with more than 300 health and social care providers nationwide to provide the facts and figures that help the NHS and social services run effectively. Its role is to collect data, analyse it and convert it into useful information which helps providers improve their services and supports academics, researchers, regulators and policymakers in their work. The NHS Information Centre also produces a wide range of statistical publications each year across a number of areas including: primary care, health and lifestyles, screening, hospital care, population and geography, social care and workforce and pay statistics.
  2. Regional data, to NHS Trust level, is available.
  3. A number of revisions have been made to methodology used to in NHS Maternity Statistics. These revisions are intended to start to bring the publication in line with the National Statistics code of practice and highlight data quality issues in order to stimulate improvement in the quality of HES maternity data submitted by NHS organisations.
  4. As a result of changes in methodology, NHS Maternity Statistics 2006-07 is not directly comparable with previous years publications, although a number of time series have been reproduced based on the new methodology for comparison purposes.
  5. For media enquiries please call 0845 257 6990 or contact: