More than one in five babies are being delivered by caesarean section at Bradford Royal Infirmary, a new guide to maternity services in the UK has revealed.
Mirroring a national trend - particularly among celebrity mums - more women having babies at the hospital are requesting the operation, in which the baby is removed through the abdomen.
In the first independent review of hospital-by-hospital caesarean rates, the BRI figure is 20.4 per cent - approximately 1,100 babies each year.
The World Health Organisation's guideline is between 10 to 15 per cent for a developed-world country.
The figure places Bradford Royal Infirmary's maternity unit 13th in a league table of northern hospitals.
Top of the list with a caesarean rate of 24.3 per cent is Harrogate District Hospital. The lowest rate is at Friargate Hospital, Northallerton.
Mr John Clayton, director of obstetrics and gynaecology at Bradford Hospitals NHS Trust, said he had seen an upward trend in women requesting an elective caesarean.
"It is not an enormous amount, but there is a slight increase," he said. "It is convenient to book a day and work around that."
But he warned that for a low-risk pregnancy, delivering by caesarean introduced unnecessary risk.
"There is a proportion of women who ask for caesarean and they would be thoroughly counselled and told that in low-risk pregnancy caesarean delivery does carry more of a risk, particularly to the mother," he said.
Socio-economic factors are also involved in the BRI figure.
"Rates very much depend on the population you serve," said Mr Clayton.
"Every town has a poor population and Bradford is no exception to that.
"There is a higher incidence of small babies in Bradford and they run the risk of requiring to be delivered by caesarean, for their own good."
Mr Clayton admitted the BRI statistic was too high, although he said it had to be seen in context.
"Friargate Hospital deals with less than 2,000 births a year, in a rural population, whereas Bradford Royal Infirmary is a busy city hospital," he said.
"However, we are not complacent. The figure is too high and we are not satisfied.
"We are working hard to keep it as low as possible."
e-mail: claire.lomax
@bradford.newquest.co.uk
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