Introduction: The patients who are candidates for surgery should be aware to select the type of anesthesia and anesthetic procedures and the choice of anesthesia should not be away from them. The recommended method for induced analgesia in cesarean section is spinal anesthesia that its usage is increasing in developed countries. But it seems that incidence of cesarean section under general anesthesia is still high in developing countries. According to the patient’s role in the choice of anesthetic technique, this study was done aimed to determine pattern of anesthesia type in cesarean section based on willingness of selected Iranian women and its related factors.
Methods: This cross sectional study was conducted on 301 women with first cesarean delivery who were hospitalized in Tehran and Semnan hospitals and had chosen the type of anesthesia by themselves in year 2012. Data were collected by available data and telephone interview and analyzed by SPSS software version 16, t-test and Chi-square test. P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant.
Results: 174 women (57.8%) chose spinal anesthesia and 127 women (42.2%) general anesthesia. There were a significant relation between history of anesthesia (p>0.01) and type of hospital (p>0.001) and selected method of anesthesia. But no significant relation were seen between maternal age, occupation, education and non-medical advice with selected method of anesthesia (p>0.05).
Conclusion: History of anesthesia and hospital type is associated with the choice of anesthetic technique. Patients who had a history of previous anesthesia or caesarean section in a private hospital chose general anesthesia more. The most important factor in choosing general anesthesia is fear of back pain and the most important factor in choosing spinal anesthesia is tendency to consciousness in the time of neonate birth.