Only about half of pregnant women who express a desire for sterilization following delivery actually undergo the procedure, according to a report in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology. Young age and African-American race were both factors that predicted postpartum sterilization would not be performed.

“When a physician sees a patients who desires postpartum sterilization, he may feel that he doesn’t need to counsel her about contraception,” senior author Dr. Melissa Gilliam, from the University of Illinois at Chicago, told Reuters Health. “However, because only about half of these women actually undergo sterilization, clinicians should probably counsel all women about the range of contraceptive methods available.”

The new findings are based on a study of 712 pregnant women who expressed a desire for postpartum sterilization at the authors’ institution between March 2002 and November 2003.

As noted, 327 of the women (46 percent) did not undergo the operation. In addition to young age (early 20s) and African American race, a sterilization request in the second trimester rather than in the first or third, and a vaginal delivery rather than a c-section, were also factors that predicted sterilization would not be performed.

“I was a little bit surprised by the racial finding,” Gilliam noted. “We’re a hospital that predominantly serves low-income women, and so we’d thought that everyone would be more or less equally likely to receive desired postpartum sterilization.”

SOURCE: Obstetrics and Gynecology, April 2005.