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Excerpt
Materials and Methods: After hospital ethical committee approval, 143 women presenting for labor were given a questionnaire 24-48 hours after delivery over an eight month period. This included 74 women who requested epidural and 69 who got other methods of pain relief.
Results and Discussions:All mothers: There was no difference between the two groups as regard to marital status, knowledge of other forms of labor analgesia, associated medical problems, time of 1st exposure to epidural knowledge, occupation, qualification, religion and practice, partners involvement in the choice of analgesia and participation in child birth classes. 89.51% (#128) of all women learnt of epidurals through friends or media.
However mothers who had epidural were significantly more likely to have private health insurance, associated medical problems, primi, and were also more satisfied with the pain relief. It is likely that the obstetricians encouraged the mothers with associated medical conditions (notably pregnancy associated hypertension) to have epidurals. It is widely accepted that epidural provides the most effective pain relief yet.
Among the mothers who had epidurals, 81.1% were completely satisfied, 13.3% partially satisfied and 5.4% not at all satisfied. 90.6% of this group expressed strong desire to have an epidural in the event of another child birth and 91.9% said they would strongly encourage their friends to have one. Significantly more than half made a decision to have epidural before they entered hospital there by dispelling the myth that midwifes strongly influence the decision of the mothers in labor in favor of an epidural. However a small group who themselves were not happy with their epidural said they would not recommend this mode of pain relief. The reasons for dissatisfaction were patchy block, delay in establishing a block, and post dural puncture head ache.
Conclusion(s): Various factors influence labor epidural uptake. Many of them are influenced by media who can be used by medical fraternity.
