[Opinion of mothers on continuous peridural obstetrical anesthesia]

The general opinion on epidural anesthesia in obstetrics may be adversely affected by recent public controversies about the mother's situation during childbirth in hospital, which nowadays is often considered to be a highly technological, impersonal, or "unnatural" procedure. This assumption led us to conduct an inquiry on maternal assessment of obstetric epidural anesthesia and its relation to the clinical and social history. The study included 113 parturients, who received epidural anesthesia (on-demand epidural injections of bupivacaine 0.25%) for vaginal delivery. Mothers were asked to answer certain questions about this regimen (e.g. analgetic efficacy; difficulties in deciding on this method; recommendations to other parturients; opinion of the role of epidural anesthesia in obstetrics; choice of analgesic regimen for future childbirth) 1 day after delivery and 2 months later. Additional social and historical factors (e.g. education; profession; family status; preceding pregnancy, childbirth or abortion; complications during pregnancy or childbirth; duration of parturition) were used to reveal relevant statistical correlations. Sixty-five percent of the patients considered pain relief by epidural anesthesia as "good" or even "very good" during the first inquiry immediately after childbirth. Women who had undergone prior interruptions of pregnancy were less satisfied, probably because of their rather ambiguous attitude towards motherhood. With regard to the choice of analgesic regimen for future childbirth (50% of the patients had made a definite decision to have epidural anesthesia under this condition), those women were especially reserved who had suffered from complications during pregnancy and disapproved of it in the future.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)