Is it time to revisit tracheal intubation for Cesarean delivery?

Excerpt

Significant progress has been achieved in obstetric anesthesia. Most notably, there has been a dramatic reduction in anesthesia-related maternal mortality. The Confidential Enquiries into Maternal Deaths in the United Kingdom was established in 1952, and in each of the first ten triennial reports, 30-50 deaths were attributed directly to anesthesia.1 In contrast, the last eight reports spanning 24 years included 41 direct anesthetic deaths,2 almost the same number that occurred over each three-year period in the earlier reports. A similar picture was also seen in North America. This reduction in anesthesia-related mortality is even more impressive considering the increasing number of anesthetics administered to parturients and the continuing rise in the rate of Cesarean delivery (CD) over the past 60 years. In the UK, it has been estimated that anesthesia for CD was more than 30 times safer in 2002 than in 1964.1 …