Evidence is mounting which shows that there are too many C-section births being performed in the United States.

There are multiple studies that have explored the rate in which doctors decide to perform cesarean sections and they have concluded that doctors are often opting for surgical birthing procedures when the measure might not be necessary. While C-sections are safe, they come with their own sets of complications, such as increased medical costs and a greater chance of the need for a C-section in subsequent childbirths.

The practice has become so widespread that the CDC reports that one-third of women who give birth get a C-section.

The latest insight into this medical trend comes from Consumer Reports, which looked into available records for births in 22 states. Of the 1,500 hospitals examined, 66 percent got the two lowest scores available in the study due to the large number of C-sections performed in them. Only 12 percent had a low enough rate of C-sections to warrant a high score from the report.

Most notable was the wild variation between hospitals in C-section numbers. Hospitals within the same city. For example, 15 percent of births at University Medical Center, in El Paso, Texas where C-section births. In contrast, Sierra Medical Center, just four miles away, had a rate of 37 percent. This was not a unique picture. Rates varied in similar ways across the country, even between hospitals with similar socioeconomic factors.

Director of Consumer Reports’ Health Ratings Center, Doris Peter said, “The variation is what gets you, that really is the thing. If you compare peer hospitals in urban areas that treat the same kind of patients — meaning they share similar socioeconomic issues — to have wildly different rates suggests that there is a problem here.”

The variation in question seems to stem from inefficient standards used to determine if a C-section is necessary. Doctors are too often concerned with preventing lawsuits or are too impatient with the labor process or fall back on the procedure because of their comfort with performing it.

The study from Consumer Reports concludes that more open dialogue between expectant parents and their doctors, earlier in the pregnancy, can help reduce the amount of C-sections. Patients need to educate themselves about the risks involved in C-sections and talk to their doctors about the types of risk factors that should be present before this alternativ1e type of birth enters the equation. Doing this would help cut down on the multitude of low risk labors that result in cesarean section births.