Ethnicity and use of obstetrical analgesia: do Pakistani women receive inadequate pain relief in labour?

To study whether the use of analgesic treatment in labour is influenced by ethnicity.A cross-sectional study of hospital patients. Setting; the two municipal hospitals, Ullevål and Aker, in Oslo, Norway. Subjects; a total of 137 obstetrical patients, 67 Pakistani women and 70 Norwegian women. Main outcome measure; use of analgesics in labour.30% of the Pakistani and 9% of the Norwegian women received no analgesia in labour. Pethidine injection was the preferred analgesic administered to Pakistani women. Women of Pakistani origin received epidural infusion or nitrous oxide and oxygen gas less frequently than Norwegian women. They also received fewer combinations of other analgesic methods. When adjusted for the mothers' age, parity and duration of delivery, Pakistani origin was the only significant predictor for receiving no analgesia in labour.Women of Pakistani origin were more than three times as likely not to receive analgesia in labour as Norwegian women. The health services offered to Pakistani women in labour were different from those offered to Norwegian women. These results indicate that women of Pakistani origin may be offered insufficient obstetrical analgesia, or that Norwegian women received unnecessary pain relief in labour.