In all Scandinavian countries medical birth registers provide data on annual numbers of deliveries and numbers of operative interventions during labour and delivery. Many of the national registers have incomplete data on obstetric anaesthesia, however, as pain relief during labour is recorded nation-wide only in Finland, Sweden and Norway. The Norwegian register contains data on anaesthesia for caesarean section covering more than 30 years,1 and similar data are available in Sweden,2 but not in the other Scandinavian countries. Consequently, all data for the year 1997 come from a recent survey in which a questionnaire was sent to each delivery unit in Scandinavia concerning its practices in pharmacological pain relief and anaesthesia for caesarean section (T Kapgas-Saarela and U Bang, unpublished work).