With the development of socio-economic and medical science, people are no longer satisfied with anesthesia only accompanied by surgery, but more expect the entire medical process from examination to treatment to be completed in painless comfort. Today Xiaobian will popularize the common sense related to childbirth analgesia!
What is analgesia in childbirth?
Labor analgesia refers to the use of a series of methods to help women reduce pain during childbirth. At present, the most widely used clinical method is to adopt the method of continuous epidural block analgesia, that is, to puncture to the epidural space in the waist and place a very soft thin tube, connect the self-controlled analgesic pump with low concentration local anesthetic drugs, block the sensory nerves of pain conduction through drugs during contraction and labor pain, relieve pain without affecting movement and uterine contractions.
Labor analgesia helps to alleviate maternal pain during childbirth, relieves maternal tension/anxiety, and makes fertility more humane.
What are the advantages of labor analgesia?
Intense contraction pain leads to increased maternal catecholamine secretion, affecting placental oxygen supply and increasing the risk of fetal hypoxia. Pain during childbirth is also an important risk factor for postpartum depression.
Therefore, childbirth analgesia can not only improve maternal comfort and reduce pain, but also ensure the safety of mothers and babies and reduce the occurrence of postpartum depression. During childbirth, the woman is also able to get a good rest and can better cooperate with the doctor during the delivery process.
Does labour analgesia have an impact on both mother and baby?
The implementation of analgesia in childbirth is based on the highest standard of maintaining the safety of the mother and fetus. The concentration of the drug used for analgesia in childbirth is much lower than that required for caesarean section anesthesia, and the amount absorbed through the placenta is minimal and does not adversely affect the fetus.
Due to normal physiological curvature of the spine and changes in hormones during pregnancy and childbirth, 40% of women after normal postpartum will develop low back pain, regardless of whether to undergo labor analgesia. Epidural block has a chance of developing puncture-related leg numbness, low back pain, headaches, and urinary retention, most of which recover some time after childbirth.
Indications for analgesia in childbirth?
Maternal voluntary
Vaginal birth trial labour (including scarring uterus, hypertension in pregnancy, preeclampsia, etc.) may be evaluated by an obstetrician.
Absence of contraindications associated with anesthesia (including intracranial hypertension, coagulation abnormalities, puncture site and systemic infection, spinal lesions or severe spinal deformities, maternal inability to cooperate with punctures, etc.)
When can it be implemented?
The traditional concept is that when the uterine opening is 3 cm, at present, a large number of clinical studies and meta-analyses have shown that the initiation of spinal analgesia during the incubation period does not increase the caesarean section rate, nor does it prolong the first stage of labor, so the size of the maternal uterine opening is no longer used as the starting time for labor analgesia. When the labor process is determined to begin, the uterus contractions are regular, and the mother feels a certain degree of pain, which can be performed if there is analgesic need.