20 years

34 years

Number of selected women giving birth for the first time who gave birth by caesarean section.

* Selection criteria: Women included are those who gave birth for the first time and met all of the following criteria:

• aged between 20 and 34 years
• gestational age at birth between 37 and 41 completed weeks
• pregnancy has one baby only (singleton)
• the presentation of the baby is vertex (baby's head was at the cervix)

Excluded are those women who have given birth prior to the current birth or who did not meet the selection criteria.

100 × (Numerator ÷ Denominator)

Number of selected women giving birth for the first time who gave birth by caesarean section.

All selected women.

• Year of birth
• State or territory of birth
• Hospital annual number of births
• Remoteness category (from mother's area of usual residence)
• Indigenous status of mother
• Hospital sector
• Patient elected accommodation status
• Labour/non-labour

Data elements are from the Perinatal national minimum data set (NMDS) or have been provided as voluntary non-standardised items by the states and territories. Records with data that are missing, not stated or not interpretable have been excluded from the denominator.

A birth is defined as the event in which a baby comes out of the uterus after a pregnancy of at least 20 weeks gestation or weighing 400 grams or more.

Caesarean section is an operative procedure to remove the baby through an incision through a woman’s abdomen and uterus.

Gestational age is a clinical measure of the duration of the pregnancy. For the National Perinatal Data Collection gestational age is reported as completed weeks.

Patient elected accommodation status is available from all jurisdictions from 2006.

Source of definition: Australian Council of Healthcare Standards (ACHS) Indicator 1.4: Selected women giving birth for the first time undergoing caesarean section. This ACHS indicator is based on the definition by Women's Healthcare Australasia (WHA) Core Maternity Indicators Project (CMIP).

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