More than half of Australian and New Zealand obstetricians are at loss to predict which women at 37-39 weeks’ gestation will go on to need an intrapartum caesarean section, a survey suggests.

Responses to the survey, which was sent to all 1423 trainees and fellows of RANZCOG in 2018, were received from one third of recipients — 394 of 750 fellows and 98 of 673 trainees.

Respondents (82% of whom were Australian) were asked the extent to which they agreed with the following statement: “At 37-39 weeks I can predict which women are likely to have an intrapartum caesarean section.”

More than half (51%) of the 467 respondents to this question either ‘disagreed’ or ‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement while 32% ‘somewhat agreed’.