Susan Burton

Another common anesthetic technique for a C-section is a spinal.

So a spinal goes deeper.

It works more quickly.

It offers what anesthesiologists call a denser block.

And it's what you're more likely to have if you're having a scheduled C-section.

Epidurals for C-sections, that's typically a patient who starts out intending to have a vaginal delivery, but something changes.

Often doctors will use that same labor epidural for surgery.

They'll just top it up to more fully numb you.

And it turns out that's your highest chance of feeling pain.

This study found that patients who had epidurals, 13% of those patients reported pain versus with spinals, only 4% of patients who got spinals reported pain.

Yes, that is what this study found, that those patients who use those existing labor epidurals are more likely to have pain.

But I also want to point out that there are plenty of patients who have C-sections with existing labor epidurals, and their pain is well managed.

And patients in this study reported pain, right?

We know that, but we don't know anything about how this pain was addressed.

So a patient might have felt pain and somebody might have intervened, you know, quickly and managed their pain appropriately.

Yeah, there's actually a really active effort to come up with those solutions.

So some of those solutions involve identifying risk factors for pain, like an epidural that's not working well during labor is probably not going to work well during a C-section, and maybe there should be a lower threshold for replacing it.

There are other medical solutions like that, like, okay, so this patient felt this kind of pain and at this level, like, what drugs did we give her and what does that tell us?

Another thing, most doctors have been taught to avoid putting a C-section patient to sleep at all costs.

And while doctors I spoke to emphasized that general anesthesia isn't the first choice for C-sections, there was agreement that putting a C-section patient to sleep when it's safe and necessary, that should be less of a taboo.