The way in which pregnancy and childbirth proceed significantly influences the health of mother and child and can have consequences for both, numerous studies have shown. In fact, new research by scientists at the University of Amsterdam Medical Centers has found that children who were born via induced labor had worse academic performance at 12 years of age.
The induction of labor carries certain risks and should only be carried out when there are reasons that justify it, such as illnesses of the mother, presence of meconium (baby poop) in the amniotic fluid, aging or loss of function of the placenta…, and always after assessing the balance between risk and benefit of the intervention. Both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ministry of Health recommend that deliveries should not be scheduled if there are no medical reasons.
The new study has analyzed data from 226,684 Dutch boys and girls and found that inducing labor in a low-risk pregnancy can influence the baby’s cognitive development in the long term. The researchers combined pregnancy data from the Dutch perinatal registry with data on school performance from Statistics Netherlands to assess the possible effects of induced labor on school performance in low-risk pregnancies.
Induced labor may have a low impact when considered on an individual level, but “could potentially have a large one on society, given the increasing number of elective inductions.”
The results have been published in Acta Obstetricia Et Gynecologica Scandinavica and have revealed a slight but significant decrease in the examination scores of children who were born after an induced labor between weeks 37 and 41 of pregnancy, compared to children at the that labor was not induced in that same week, among low-risk pregnancies. This, according to Dr. Renée Burger, one of the authors of the work, warns that it may have a low impact if considered at the individual level, but “it could have a potentially great one in society, given the increasing number of elective inductions.”
Consequences of inducing labor on cognitive development
The study only analyzed data from pregnancies in which there had been no complications and shows that, up to and including 41 weeks of gestation, children born after induction of labor had lower scores than those who were born by childbirth. natural. The researchers explain in their article: “For every gestational age up to 41 weeks, induction of labor was associated with lower school performance scores compared with no intervention. Fewer children reached upper secondary school after induction of labor (at 38 weeks, 48% vs 54%).
In the Netherlands, 28% (47,068) of deliveries were induced in 2021. In Spain, ‘El Parto es Nuestro’ points out that fewer and fewer births are taking place on weekends and holidays, which suggests an increase in the number of induced deliveries and scheduled caesarean sections in accordance with the recommendations of the WHO and the Ministry of Health. According to the WHO, the percentage of inductions has gone from 19% in 2010 to 34% in 2018, which triples the percentage of inductions recommended by this organization (<10%). Regarding the percentage of scheduled caesarean sections, it has also increased: from 8.5% in 2015 to 9.2% in 2019.
Christiane Schwarz, Head of the Department of Obstetric Sciences of the Institute of Health Sciences of the University of Lübeck (Germany), has highlighted in her statements to SMC Spain that “the long-term impact of routine interventions in healthy people should be evaluated accordingly. systematically, not only in the case of labor induction. This requires recording the short- and long-term effects – intended and unintended – of the interventions, in order to make balanced decisions for or against the intervention. In this case, not only the physical consequences must be taken into account, but also the psychosocial ones. This study addresses these questions.”
Wessel Ganzevoort, a gynecologist and study author, says that previous studies looked at the potential negative consequences of induced labor in the short term, such as “death of the baby and serious problems soon after birth,” but did not look at its long-term effects on the child and how it might affect their cognitive development.
Both Burger and Ganzevoort insist that the decision to induce labor must be based on a balance of risks and benefits for the pregnant woman and baby. If there are complications in the pregnancy and the mother or her child is at risk if the pregnancy continues, these risks are more important than a modest long-term adverse effect, such as reduced school performance. However, in an uncomplicated pregnancy before 41 weeks, when there is no obvious benefit from inducing labor, they are of the opinion that induction should be used with caution.
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