Background: An episiotomy is a surgically planned incision on the posterior vaginal wall and perineum performed during second stage of labour to facilitate delivery neonate. The practice has been used for many decades in belief that it offers benefit mother With objective protecting pelvic floor preventing fetal trauma, birth, its routine use was widely accepted past, principally woman her firs...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate the changing association between lateral episiotomy and obstetric anal sphincter injury (OASIS) for women with low and high baseline risk of OASIS. DESIGN A population-based register study. SETTING Data gathered from the Finnish Medical Birth Register for the years 2004-2011. PARTICIPANTS All women with spontaneous vaginal or vacuum-assisted singleton births in Finl...

INTRODUCTION There is limited knowledge regarding the symptom profile of genito-pelvic pain in pregnancy and postpartum, and potential psychosocial predictors of this pain. Prior studies have reported a positive association between prepregnancy pain and postpartum genito-pelvic pain. Greater fear avoidance has been associated with increased genital pain intensity in women, unrelated to childbir...

Objectives: To estimate episiotomy rate in a rural population and to find out if higher episiotomy rate is associated with place of delivery and category of health care provider. Design: Population based cross sectional study Setting: Rural population near Chennai. Sample: Included 442 mothers who had vaginal delivery between August 2004 and July 2005. Methods: Cluster sampling was used to sele...

BACKGROUND To investigate the association between type of episiotomy and obstetric outcomes among 6,187 women with type 3 Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). METHODS We conducted a secondary analysis of women presenting in labor to 28 obstetric centres in Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Sudan between November 2001 and March 2003. Data were analysed using cross tabulations and mu...

Introduction Episiotomy is a controversial procedure, especially because the discussion that surrounds it has gone beyond the field of scientific debate, being adopted as an indicator of the "humanization of childbirth". The scientific literature indicates that episiotomy should not be performed routinely, but selectively. Objectives To review the literature in order to assess whether the imple...

OBJECTIVE To review the use of episiotomy during vaginal delivery in Hong Kong public hospitals. DESIGN Prospective observational survey. SETTING Public hospitals, Hong Kong. PARTICIPANTS Women who underwent normal vaginal delivery of a singleton foetus with cephalic presentation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Number of women having an episiotomy, severe-degree (third- or fourth-degree) tear, o...

Episiotomy is a very common operation but little is known of its short-term or long-term morbidity.A prospective study was designed to record postpartum perineal discomfort and to investigate the presence and persistence of dyspareunia following episiotomy in 140 primigravidae. A comparison was made between those whose perineal skin was sutured with a subcuticular polyglycolic acid (;Dexon') st...