Social predictors of caesarean section births in Italy.

BACKGROUND Caesarean section birth is a frequent mode of delivery worldwide. Several social factors have been demonstrated to be strong predictors of caesarean births. OBJECTIVES To identify possible social predictors of caesarean section births in Italy. METHODS Data for this study were drawn from the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) survey conducted during year 2005 which comprised a nationally representative sample of 50,474 households (128,040 subjects). This 2005 ISTAT survey asked several questions to women who delivered (n=5,812) in the past five years prior to the survey about their delivery mode. The main dependent variables were caesarean delivery rates while independent variables included sociodemographics, health and health-related factors. Descriptive statistics, bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed. RESULTS Our sample comprised 5,812 women. Rate of caesarean deliveries was 36.2 percent. Age (adjOR: 0.961; p=0.000) and residence (Reference: North-West; Centre: adjOR: 0.753, p=0.001; South: adjOR: 0.484, p=0.000; Islands: adjOR: 0.629, p=0.000) were the sole social factors which were significant in predicting caesarean delivery (adjusted model). CONCLUSIONS Rate of caesarean delivery in Italy is rather high. Age and residence are the sole social predictors evidenced from the ISTAT 2005 survey data.