Gestational hypertension causes multiple problems

Awareness Remains Low, Says Study
It may not be as infamous as its usual peer, diabetes, but is deadlier. And pregnant women are paying the price. For long, doctors have known that hypertension is the second most prevalent medical disorder seen during pregnancy. Now, a study, covering 245 pregnant women in a city-based hospital, has revealed the extent of complications caused by pregnancy-induced hypertension: Three out of every 10 women with severe PIH faced risk of placental abruption and birth asphyxia, and intrauterine growth retardation was seen in around 25% of the cases.
Lokeshwari Jayaraman from the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at Sri Muthukumaran Medical College hospital was among six researchers from across the country who set out to study feto-maternal complications in PIH cases, hoping to establish a pattern to identify them early.

Among the participants with the condition chosen for the study, 59% had the milder form of hypertension, 22% had moderate and 18.4% had severe PIH. “The numbers revealed a significant relation between the antenatal care given to the women and the severity of PIH. It was higher among women with fewer hospital visits,” said Jayaraman.

Gestational hypertension or pregnancy-induced hypertension is the development of new hypertension in a pregnant woman after 20 weeks gestation. It usually affects 6-8% of pregnant women, and, along with haemorrhage and infection, contributes to maternal mortality.

Doctors say that unlike gestational diabetes, which affects 40% of the pregnant population, awareness on PIH remains low. “It isn’t as well recognised but the impact is much more compared to diabetes. It can leave the mother with long-term complications like persistent hypertension and cardiovascular morbidity,” said gynaecologist Dr Geetha Haripriya.

source”cnbc”

She said that while many of them respond well to treatment, at least 3-4% of them don’t. “In such instances, the only option open to us is to induce labour,” she said.

According to the study, published in the International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, among mothers the most common complication was imminent eclampsia – a condition where the woman suffers from convulsions, often followed by coma, posing a threat to her health and that of the baby. As for the foetus, the most common symptom researchers noticed was birth asphyxia – deprivation of oxygen to a newborn infant – followed by intra-uterine growth retardation.