Incidence and Predictors of Chronic Pain After Vaginal Childbirth and C-section - a Prospective Cohort Study

There are different variables that may influence the occurrence of chronic pain after childbirth. One of these could be c- section , pain status before childbirth or other psychological factors like fear of birth, irrational cognitive beliefs about delivery and perinatal complications. The pain status (intensity and location), demographic data, anesthesiological details and data about the circumstances of birth are evaluated by structured interview during pregnancy and 3 month and 12 moth after childbirth. The pregnant women received an individual code for access to the survey on the website of the study. The recruitment takes placed in doctors or midwifes office and by advertising. The commuting area was the city of Tuebingen (Germany). Women who feel uncomfortable with the media based survey supplied a written form. Study population is planned with 500 participants. The Institute for Clinical Epidemiology and Applied Biometry support the statistical analysis.