Method of Anesthesia and Perioperative Risk Factors, Maternal Anesthesia Complications, and Neonatal Mortality Following Cesarean Delivery in Africa: A Substudy of a 7-day Prospective Observational Cohort Study

( Anesth Analg . 2024;138(6):1275-1284. doi: 10.1213/ANE.0000000000006750) A key finding of the African Surgical Outcomes Study (ASOS) was that general anesthesia (GA) was linked to higher maternal and neonatal risk and that cesarean delivery (CD) in Africa was 50 times higher than in high-income countries. The ASOS recruited consecutive patients 18 years or older who had inpatient surgery in 183 hospitals in 22 African countries over a 7-day period between February 2016 and May 2016. This ASOS substudy of the obstetric cohort was designed primarily to estimate the association between preoperative risk factors and the outcome of the type of anesthesia administered. The secondary aim was to estimate the association between the method of anesthesia and maternal and neonatal outcomes.