Influence of Immersion in Water During Labor on the Request of Epidural Anesthesia by Pregnant Women

Women are showing a growing interest in less medicalized childbirth. According to the french 2021 perinatal survey, 52.2% of women want to limit medical procedures and 38.2% of women want childbirth without epidural anesthesia. Between 77 and 82% of deliveries nevertheless lead to an epidural anesthesia. The painful feeling seems to be the main motivation for using this mode of anesthesia.

In the scientific literature, few data from clinical studies focus on the effects of immersion in water during childbirth. The analgesic effects of immersion in water to lessen the painful experience are yet to be proven. The opening of a physiological delivery room with a bathtub at the Saint-Etienne University Hospital since October 2020 provides data that has not been exploited yet and could make possible to answer the question of the analgesic effects of immersion in water during labour. The difficulties of analysis and the subjectivity of the painful feeling led us to consider the request of epidural anesthesia as the main analysis criterion.