University of California San Francisco
For women with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), pregnancy can be an uncertain time due to limited clinical data about how IBD medications impact pregnancy outcomes and infants who have been exposed to IBD medications in utero.
As a matter of policy, pregnant women are excluded from clinical trials of experimental therapies for IBD and when a new therapy achieves regulatory approval, there is only animal safety data, but no human pregnancy safety data.
Cesarean delivery is the most common inpatient surgery in the U.S. but it also carries inherent surgical risks, including vascular, visceral, soft tissue, and nerve damage, which can lead to significant maternal health complications and even death.
Despite the high frequency of cesarean delivery in the U.S., research into their surgical complications has often included imprecise data, mixing medical and anesthetic complications with surgery specific complications.