Patient characteristics of contraception and sterilization selection at vaginal delivery

OBJECTIVE: To examine patient characteristics among those who selected the long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) and surgical sterilization methods at vaginal delivery. DESIGN: Retrospective cohort study. SETTING: The National Inpatient Sample. PATIENT(S): A total of 8,013,785 vaginal deliveries from October 2016 to December 2019. INTERVENTION(S): Exposure assignment per LARC (subdermal contraceptive implant [implants] or intrauterine device [IUD]) or surgical sterilization (bilateral salpingectomy [BS] or bilateral tubal ligation [BTL]) type. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE(S): Utilization trends of LARC or surgical sterilization, assessed with linear segmented regression with log-transformation, and differences in patient characteristics per the exposure strata (implants vs. IUD in the LARC group and BS or BTL in the surgical sterilization group), assessed using the multivariate binary logistic regression model. RESULT(S): In a comparison between LARC and surgical sterilization, surgical sterilization use decreased from 1.90% to 1.55% (18.4% relative decrease), whereas LARC use increased from 0.35% to 1.02% (191% relative increase). In the LARC group, implant use (from 0.12% to 0.50%) increased more compared with IUD use (from 0.22% to 0.52%): relative increase, 317% vs. 136%. In the surgical sterilization group, BTL use decreased from 0.66% to 0.18% (72.7% relative decrease), whereas BS use was statistically unchanged (from 1.24% to 1.37%). In a multivariate analysis, recent year remained an independent characteristic for implant use in the LARC group and BS use in the surgical sterilization group. Moreover, in both LARC and surgical sterilization strata, procedure choices significantly differed on the basis of patient, pregnancy, hospital, and delivery factors. CONCLUSION(S): Immediate postpartum contraception choice has evolved in recent years in the United States with an increasing demand for the LARC methods with implants at the time of vaginal delivery.