Anesthesia During C-Section Does Not Cause Developmental Delays

When I was pregnant eleven years ago I was so terrified about the potential to harm my baby through what I ate and medications that I took I probably worried way more than I should have. One of the things I worried ceaselessly about was how anesthesia could possibly affect my baby if I had to have a C-section.

As luck would have it, I was able to deliver vaginally, but what if I had no other choice but to have a C-section? I would not have taken that news well. I didn’t know whether the anesthesia would affect my baby or not. Now, the Mayo Clinic has come out with a study that confirms the anesthesia during a C-section does not cause learning disabilities to the baby or cause any developmental delays in children.

“We found that the incidence of learning disabilities was equal between children who were delivered vaginally and those who were delivered via C-section but with general anesthesia,” says Juraj Sprung, M.D., Ph.D., a Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist who led the study. “It’s reassuring that the anesthetics required for Cesarean delivery do not appear to cause long-term brain problems.”

For more information about this study, visit the Mayo Clinic blog.