[Anesthesia for cesarean section in Germany. A survey].

AIM OF STUDY: Goal of this survey is to give an overview of anaesthesia for caesarean section in Germany.

METHOD: In 1994 and 1995, we sent a questionnaire to the chief-anaesthetists of all German hospitals with departments of gynaecology/obstetrics to find out the routine anaesthetic procedures for caesarean section.

RESULTS

We obtained data from 409 hospitals (response rate 46.4%) with 321,816 births--50,123 of which were sections (mean caesarean section rate 16.6%). The mean general anaesthesia rate for elective caesarean sections was 66.5%, for non-elective sections 90.8%. The mean epidural anaesthesia rate for caesarean section was 22.6% and the mean spinal anaesthesia rate was 9.8%. For general anaesthesia most hospitals used antacids and/or histamine2-receptor antagonists (64.6% of responding hospitals). Anaesthesia was induced with intravenous barbiturates (82%), succinylcholine for intubation (98.2%) and no opioids before clamping of the cord (94.8%). For regional anaesthesia bupivacaine was the most common local anaesthetic (spinal 84.0%, epidural 96.8%). Opioids were added to local anaesthetics for epidural anaesthesia at 21.4% of the hospitals.

CONCLUSIONS

General anaesthesia is the commonest practice for caesarean sections at German hospitals. Nowadays regional anaesthesia gains more importance compared to previous German surveys and in agreement with foreign data.