Attitudes of patients to obstetric analgesia at the University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Pain relief, for different reasons, is controversial worldwide. We designed this study to assess the level of awareness of antenatal patients to analgesia in labour and to evaluate the effect of age, parity and educational status on the awareness and acceptability of pain relief in labour. A structured questionnaire was administered to 1,000 antenatal patients between 1 June 2000 and 31 May 2001. Spearman's correlation coefficient was applied to estimate the correlation between the ranked dependent variable (awareness and acceptability) and age, parity and educational status (independent variables). Awareness of pain relief methods was seen in only 27.1%. The most common method known was the use of systemic opioids (80%); only 10% were aware of epidural analgesia and about 14% knew of inhalational analgesia. Acceptance of methods was, however, 57.6%. The most common reason for non-acceptance was that 'The pain of labour is natural' in 76.5%, 12% feared complications to the baby and 25% gave other reasons. Age, parity and educational status did not affect awareness. Educational status had positive correlation (rho = 0.13, P < 0.05) with acceptance while age had a negative correlation (rho = -0.124, P<0.05). Awareness of obstetric analgesia is still relatively low in this environment; however, a high proportion of patients would accept analgesia in labour if offered.