This layer displays the estimated percentage of live births by cesarean delivery. A cesarean delivery is the extraction of the fetus, placenta, and membranes through an incision in the maternal abdominal and uterine walls. For more information visit Maternal and Infant Health Mapping Tool .

A local empirical Bayes algorithm was used to provide more stable estimates, particularly for counties with small numbers that would otherwise be unreliable or suppressed to ensure confidentiality. The degree of smoothing is inversely proportional to the number of events. Thus, counties with larger numbers of births will have less smoothing and little to no difference between actual or raw data available on CDC WONDER and smoothed estimates, while counties with smaller numbers of births will borrow strength from neighboring counties to improve the stability of estimates. Estimates are suppressed if there were fewer than 10 events in the county and its adjacent neighbors. For more information: Marshall RJ. Mapping disease and mortality rates using Empirical Bayes estimators. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. 1991; 40:283-94.