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FRIDAY, March 2 (HealthDay News) -- Second-born twins are twice as likely as the firstborn to die at birth or shortly after due to complications during delivery, British researchers report.
The risk -- which remains very small -- appears to be lessened when both twins are delivered by Caesarean section, the study found.
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"Compared with the first twin, the second twin is more than twice as likely to die during delivery or in the first four weeks of life," said lead author Dr. Gordon Smith, the head of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Cambridge University. "This is observed among twins born at term -- 36 weeks or later -- but not in prematurely delivered twins," he added.
The absolute risk to the second twin is still very small, about one in every 250 twin births, Smith said.
His team published its findings in the March 2 online edition of the British Medical Journal.
In the study, Smith's group collected data on twin pregnancies in England, Northern Ireland and Wales between 1994 and 2003. The researchers detected 1,377 cases of twin pregnancies where one twin died during delivery or shortly after.
The deaths were due to direct complications of birth, Smith said. These included prolapsed umbilical cord (delivery of the baby's umbilical cord occurs prior to the baby's birth), complications of breech birth, and separation of the second twin's placenta after delivery of the first twin.
"We found that the risk for the second twin tended to be less among those delivered by Caesarean section," Smith said. "This is consistent with previous studies, which had also suggested that planned Caesarean section was associated with lower risks of death and morbidity for the second twin," he said.
However, there is no information that shows directly that Caesarean section is protective, and the risk to any one twin baby remains very small, Smith said.
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