Factors affecting ceasarean section among women in Qatar

Abstract

Background: Cesarean section (CS) delivery is one of the top concerns when it comes to women in maternity age, given the fact that CS rate are on the rise globally and especially in Qatar. Many socioeconomic, demographic, clinical and institutional factors that are likely to play a role in that increase. The aim of this study is to investigate factors that may affect the CS delivery in Qatar. Objective: Identify the factors playing a major role in the increase of CS rates among women in Qatar and determine the significance of the strength of their effect on the issue. Methodology: Using Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) 2012. The study focused on the women's questionnaire with a final sample of 761 women aged 19- 49 years whom have had given birth in their lifetime before the survey after applying an inclusion criteria to the 5809 women in the dataset. IBM SPSS 26 was used to perform descriptive analysis to describe our data, bivariate analysis to assess the associations between variables, multivariate analysis to adjust for external confounders within these associations, and multilevel analysis to assess the significance of variations within levels of the clustered dataset. To investigated factors of: age of women, frequency of watching TV, level of school, antenatal care by whom, assistance at delivery by whom, place of delivery, and weight of baby. Result: The study found that the odds ratio of CS for mothers less than 25 is lower by 54.4% than women 35 years and above with (p-value = 0.020; 95% CI 0.235 -0.883). Furthermore, the type professional who assisted the birth specially nurses, plays a significant role for the outcome of whether they experience CS or not; the odds ratio of that is 51.8% than any other professional with. One of the other significant associations with CS rates was the place of birth (p-value = 0.000; 95% CI 0.207- 0.634) as mothers who give birth governmental hospitals have CS rates lower by 63.8% than those who deliver in private hospitals. Conclusion: The study found a significant association between age of women, frequency of TV watching, assistance at birth, and place of birth with the outcome of the study which is undergoing CS delivery or not. These results can be used as evidence-base for further research on cesarean section delivery in Qatar.