[Survey on practice of regional anaesthesia in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Part 3: Methods in obstetric anaesthesia].

The practice of regional anaesthesia in German speaking countries was investigated by a survey. The last part of the trilogy contains the presentation and evaluation of the data about the methods in obstetric anaesthesia. In 2002 questionnaires were mailed to 750 randomly selected departments of anaesthesia, 384 hospitals (51.2%) responded of which 278 had an obstetric unit. Caesarean section rate was 22.5+/-8.2% and for elective caesarean section spinal anaesthesia was mostly used. General anaesthesia was never used in 58.3% of Swiss, 10.2% of German, and 21.1% of Austrian hospitals. For non-elective caesarean section 42.1% of the hospitals often used a spinal anaesthesia, and 44.8% sometimes, in Switzerland these were 92.9% and 7.1%, respectively. Pain relief for labour was usually achieved with epidural anaesthesia or drugs. The trend from general to regional anaesthesia for caesarean section is continued, as is the trend from local infiltrative techniques to epidural anaesthesia for vaginal delivery. Switzerland was in the forefront for these developments.