Maternal febrile morbidity after cesarean section.

The frequency of puerperal febrile complications is considerably higher following cesarean section than after vaginal delivery. In a retrospective investigation of 234 planned operations and 506 emergency operations, a significantly different frequency of febrile morbidity (FM) was found following the two types of operation (7.7% vs. 20.9%). The development of FM following emergency operation was investigated in relation to factors such as age, parity, repeat cesarean section, surgeon's experience, peroperative bleeding, rupture of membranes, frequency of vaginal exploration, gestational weeks, pre- and postoperative anemia. We found some predisposing factors to FM and of these five, each was significant, but a multiple regression analysis showed that only rupture of the membranes, and pre- and postoperative anemia have an independent significant explanatory value (p less than 0.01).