Uptake of Epidural Analgesia among Parturients at a Tertiary Centre in Port Harcourt, South-South Nigeria

Background Painless, yet progressive labour process is the desire of most parturients globally, and this can be achieved effectively with epidural analgesia especially if administered timely. Epidural analgesia provides an effective means of pain relief in labour and has been shone not to affect the progress of the first stage of labour if administered early. It is the mainstay of labour analgesia in high income countries.  Aim To assess the uptake of epidural analgesia among parturients at Rivers State University Teaching Hospital, Port Harcourt, South-South Nigeria.  Methodology This was a descriptive cross-sectional study conducted at the obstetric unit of the Rivers State University Teaching Hospital involving 393 women within 24 hours of spontaneous vaginal delivery. The women who met the eligibility criteria and gave consent for the study were recruited consecutively until the sample size was obtained. The data was collected using an interviewer administered semi-structured questionnaire and analysis was done using IBM Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 22.0 for windows. Descriptive statistics employed frequencies and proportions.  Results The mean age of the parturients was 30.30 years with standard deviation of 5.01 years, the mean parity was Para 1 and the mean gestational age at delivery was 38.12 weeks (SD-3.63 weeks) The proportion of the respondents that had heard of epidural analgesia was 42.5% while majority (57.5%) had no idea about the subject. The sources of information about the subject included; social media (27.5%), antenatal clinic (9.2%), radio/television (3.6%), family/friends (2.0%) while 0.3% heard from other sources. The uptake of epidural analgesia was 1.5%, however, 76.5% of those who did not receive this form of analgesia stated that they would have loved to receive it if offered, 16.0% did not express willingness to have accepted the method and 7.5% were unsure of whether they would have loved to receive it or not.Conclusion The uptake of epidural analgesia has been shown to be sub-optimal in low resource settings in spite of its effectiveness as labour analgesia as shown in this study. This may be as a result of insufficient knowledge or awareness of its effectiveness, which also played out in this study. This can be improved by incorporating enlightenment programs on epidural analgesia in the regular antenatal programs as this is crucial for a more pleasurable labour process.