Postnatal quality of life in women after normal vaginal delivery and caesarean section

Behnaz Torkan¹ , Sousan Parsay² , Minoor Lamyian³ , Anoshirvan Kazemnejad³ and Ali Montazeri⁴

¹Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Khorasgan Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

²Department of Health and Social Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

³Faculty of Medicine, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

⁴Iranian Institute for Health Sciences Research, ACECR, Tehran, Iran

author email corresponding author email

BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 2009, 9:4doi:10.1186/1471-2393-9-4

The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2393/9/4

Received:	16 September 2008
Accepted:	30 January 2009
Published:	30 January 2009

© 2009 Torkan et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Background

Caesarean section might increase the incidence of surgical interventions and problems resulting from hospitalization and thus affecting quality of life in women after delivery. This study aimed to compare quality of life in women after normal delivery and caesarean section.

Methods

This was a prospective study. A sample of women with normal delivery and caesarean section from 5 health care centers in Isfahan, Iran were entered into the study. Quality of life was measured using the SF-36 at two points in time (time 1: 6 to 8 weeks after delivery; time 2: 12 to 14 weeks after delivery). Data were analyzed to compare quality of life in the two study groups.

Results

In all 100 women were interviewed (50 with normal delivery and 50 with caesarean section). Postnatal quality of life in both groups was improved from time1 to time 2. However, comparing the mean scores between the normal and caesarean delivery groups the results showed that in general the normal vaginal delivery group had a better quality of life for almost all subscales in both assessment times. The differences were significant for vitality (mean score 62.9 vs. 54.4 P = 0.03) and mental health (mean score 75.1 vs. 66.7, P = 0.03) at first assessment and for physical functioning (mean score 88.4 vs. 81.5, P = 0.03) at second evaluation. However, comparing the findings within each group the analysis showed that the normal vaginal delivery group improved more on physical health related quality of life while the caesarean section group improved more on mental health related quality of life.

Conclusion

Although the study did not show a clear cut benefit in favor of either methods of delivery that are normal vaginal delivery or caesarean section, the findings suggest that normal vaginal delivery might lead to a better quality of life especially resulting in a superior physical health. Indeed in the absence of medical indications normal vaginal delivery might be better to be considered as the first priority in term pregnancy.