[Electromedical methods for pain reduction during delivery (author's transl)].

The authors of this paper interviewed 200 pregnant women and another 200 patients on their own maternity ward to find out about their views and wishes regarding pain reducing procedures during delivery, with or without reduced consciousness in the course of labour. Only 13 per cent of them wanted to sleep during delivery, while almost 90 per cent insisted on being kept fully alert and on playing an active role in childbirth.--Yet, there has been growing demand for analgetic treatment among maternity ward patients, which, obviously, has been attributable to birth trauma. For example, the percentage of women who asked for peridural anaesthesia grew from 36 ante-partum to 64 post-partum.--The replies given by the patients then were related by the authors to the results of transcutaneous nerve stimulation (TNS) and cerebral electric stimulation (CES). Both methods had good effects on more than 50 per cent of the cases and partial effects on 25 to 30 per cent.--The authors feel that those no-risk simple methods should give good results in most cases in terms of less labour pain with full consciousness. Other methods, with higher risk, might be reserved for patients on whom simple methods fail.