NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Despite some concerns to the contrary, babies delivered by cesarean may not make more visits to the doctor's office or hospital early in life, a study has found.
Some research has suggested that C-sections may affect children's long-term health, possibly increasing their chances of conditions such as asthma, allergies and gastrointestinal symptoms.
Passing through the birth canal exposes newborns to "good" bacteria from their mothers, which is thought to be important in immune system development. One theory is that, because infants born via C-section do not gain this benefit, they might be more vulnerable to certain health problems, like allergies, later on.
But in the new study, published in the journal Epidemiology, Hong Kong researchers found that babies delivered by C-section did not have higher rates of hospitalization or outpatient visits during their first 18 months of life.
"The findings should reassure parents whose children were delivered by caesarean in that we could not find any substantial adverse impact in terms of health services use," Dr. Gabriel M. Leung, the study's lead author, told Reuters Health.
There was, however, some evidence of a weak link between C-section delivery and doctor visits for certain conditions, including gastrointestinal symptoms and skin problems.
So the study cannot "rule out" the possibility of certain health effects, noted Leung, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong.
More importantly, Leung said, the findings do not give a go-ahead to "inappropriate use of surgical delivery."
The question of whether children and mothers fare differently after a C-section than after vaginal birth has taken on more interest, given the growth in recent years of medically unnecessary, elective C-sections.
Though there was no evidence of longer-term harm in this study, "we still recommend the judicious, informed and evidence-based" use of cesareans, Leung said.
The researchers based their findings on an 18-month follow-up study of 8,327 children born in Hong Kong in 1997 -- 27 percent of whom were delivered by C-section.
Overall, the study found that 28 percent of children who were delivered vaginally were admitted to the hospital for some reason by the time they were 18 months old. That compared with 23 percent of children delivered by C-section. About half of the C-section group had to visit a doctor for an illness, versus 46 percent of children born vaginally.
None of these differences were statistically significant, according to the researchers.
Still, they conclude, given the rise in cesarean rates in so many countries, studies should continue to follow the potential effects on children's and mothers' long-term well-being.
