Objective:

Anaesthesiologists are applying regional anaesthesia for caesarean section at an increasing rate compared to previous years. In our study, we tried to evaluate the perspective of obstetricians towards this trend.

Methods:

Questionnaires were sent to e-mail addresses of obstetricians via the internet; 195 obstetricians replied. Sex, age, work place, employer, working durations as consultant, preference of anaesthesia for caesarean section and their bias towards regional anaesthesia were asked with these questionnaires. A 5-point Likert scale was used to evaluate their bias towards regional anaesthesia.

Results:

While 82.1% of obstetricians (n: 160) preferred regional anaesthesia, 17.9% of obstetricians (n: 35) favoured general anaesthesia for caesarean section for both themselves and their primary relatives. However, 80% of the participants opted for regional anaesthesia for their patients; only 20% of the participants still preferred general anaesthesia for caesarean section. Chi-square tests that were used to evaluate the relationship between demographic data and anaesthesia choices of obstetricians for both themselves, their primary relatives and their patients did not reveal any statistically significant differences (p<0.05).

Conclusion:

A large portion of Turkish obstetricians consider regional anaesthesia a safe procedure and prefer it highly for both themselves and their patients.

Keywords: Caesarean section anaesthesia, regional anaesthesia, preference of anaesthesia