(Press-News.org) Women with pre-eclampsia are at a higher risk of complications following delivery and should continue to be monitored for up to 72 hours, suggests a new review published today (11/01/13) in The Obstetrician and Gynaecologist (TOG).
The review analyses the health risks associated with postnatal hypertension, elevated blood pressure that occurs after childbirth, and looks at the women at risk of this condition and treatments available.
There is extensive literature on hypertension in the antenatal and intrapartum period, but there is little information on postpartum hypertension.
Following an uncomplicated pregnancy most women will experience increased blood pressure during the postpartum period; however, sustained hypertension in the postnatal period can be a life threatening condition, states the review.
Women most at risk of developing postnatal hypertension are those who have had pregnancy induced hypertension or pre-eclampsia. These women remain at risk of serious complications following delivery and should continue to be monitored as an inpatient for at least 72 hours, says the review. However, women can also develop hypertension following delivery without prior risk factors. Symptoms can include headaches, visual disturbance, nausea and vomiting.
The potential complications of pre-eclampsia in the postpartum period are largely similar to those in the antenatal period with the exception of fetal complications and severe hypertension should prompt urgent treatment to prevent cerebral haemorrhage, says the review.
The review looks at a previous study which analysed the outcomes of women readmitted to hospital in the postnatal period (up to day 24) who received a diagnosis of pre-eclampsia. The results showed a high incidence of complications: 16% were diagnosed with eclampsia, 9% with pulmonary oedema (a build up of fluid) and one maternal death was reported.
Recently published NICE guidance for postpartum care indicates that blood pressure should be measured within 6 hours of delivery. Furthermore, at the first postnatal contact, all women should be made aware of the symptoms of pre-eclampsia along with the need to urgently contact an appropriate health professional if they have symptoms.
The authors of the review emphasise the need for prolonged vigilance in the postpartum period and the importance of investigating reported symptoms in at-risk women. They also recommend that both hospital and community teams need to have referral and management guidelines in place around postnatal hypertension.
Furthermore, the authors of the review conclude that women at increased risk of hypertension should be offered low-dose aspirin and increased blood pressure surveillance in a future pregnancy.
Jason Waugh, co-author of the review and TOG's Editor-in-Chief said:
"There is little evidence to guide clinicians treating postpartum hypertension. Poorly managed postpartum hypertension frequently causes unnecessary concern for the patient and her carers, delays discharge from hospital and will occasionally place women at risk of significant complications.
"Women with pre-eclampsia should be encouraged to delay discharge and once they leave hospital the community midwife should monitor blood pressure for the first 2 weeks. This is then followed up at the 6-week postnatal visit. If symptoms persist there may be an underlying cause."
### END
Women with pre-eclampsia are at higher risk of complications following childbirth
2013-01-11
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Women should wait at least 12 months before trying for a baby following weight loss surgery
2013-01-11
Women should wait at least 12 months before trying for a baby following weight loss surgery and need further advice and information on reproductive issues, suggests a new evidence-based literature review published today (11/01/13) in The Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (TOG).
The review looks at the safety, advantages and limitations of bariatric surgery and multidisciplinary management of patients before, during and after pregnancy.
With the prevalence of obesity among women of reproductive age expected to rise from 24.2% in 2005 to 28.3% in 2015, the number of women ...
HRT for postmenopausal symptoms can be recommended as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy
2013-01-11
Herbal and complementary medicines could be recommended as an alternative to hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for treating postmenopausal symptoms says a new review published today in The Obstetrician and Gynaecologist (TOG).
The review outlines the advantages and limitations of both pharmacological and herbal and complementary treatments for women with postmenopausal symptoms.
The menopause is defined as the time after a woman's menstrual periods have ceased (12 months after a woman's final menstrual period). It is associated with an estrogen deficiency and can cause ...
New material harvests energy from water vapor
2013-01-11
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- MIT engineers have created a new polymer film that can generate electricity by drawing on a ubiquitous source: water vapor.
The new material changes its shape after absorbing tiny amounts of evaporated water, allowing it to repeatedly curl up and down. Harnessing this continuous motion could drive robotic limbs or generate enough electricity to power micro- and nanoelectronic devices, such as environmental sensors.
"With a sensor powered by a battery, you have to replace it periodically. If you have this device, you can harvest energy from the environment ...
A rock is a clock: Physicist uses matter to tell time
2013-01-11
Ever since he was a kid growing up in Germany, Holger Müller has been asking himself a fundamental question: What is time?
That question has now led Müller, today an associate professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, to a fundamentally new way of measuring time.
Taking advantage of the fact that, in nature, matter can be both a particle and a wave, he has discovered a way to tell time by counting the oscillations of a matter wave. A matter wave's frequency is 10 billion times higher than that of visible light.
"A rock is a clock, so to speak," ...
The effects of China's One Child Policy on its children
2013-01-11
New research shows China's controversial One Child Policy (OCP) has not only dramatically re-shaped the population, but has produced individuals lacking characteristics important for economic and social attainment.
In research published today in Science, Professors Lisa Cameron and Lata Gangadharan from Monash University, Professor Xin Meng from the Australian National University (ANU) and Associate Professor Nisvan Erkal from the University of Melbourne examined cohorts of children born just before and after the OCP was introduced. They assessed social and competitive ...
Bengali forests are fading away
2013-01-11
RAPID deterioration in mangrove health is occurring in the Sundarbans, resulting in as much as 200m of coast disappearing in a single year.
A report published today (11th Jan) in Remote Sensing by scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) states that as human development thrives, and global temperature continues to rise, natural protection from tidal waves and cyclones is being degraded at alarming rates. This will inevitably lead to species loss in this richly biodiverse part of the world, if nothing is done to stop it.
ZSL's Dr Nathalie Pettorelli, senior ...
Lack of guidelines create ethical dilemmas in social network-based research
2013-01-11
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Mass. (January 10, 2013) –With millions of adolescent users, social network sites (SNSs) are a rich data source for academic research studies. But ethical guidelines governing how researchers should obtain and use this data is seriously lacking, says Tufts University's R. Benjamin Shapiro, Ph.D., the McDonnell Family Professor in Engineering Education at Tufts University's School of Engineering, in an article published in the January 11 edition of Science.
"The use of social network sites for design research is accelerating but the academic research ...
Immunotherapy reduces allergic patients' sensitivity to peanuts
2013-01-11
Of all foods, peanuts are the most frequent cause of life-threatening and fatal allergic reactions. New research at National Jewish Health provides additional support for a strategy to reduce the severity of reactions to peanut— repeatedly consuming small amounts of the very food that causes those reactions in the first place, a practice called immunotherapy.
The new research, published in the January 2013 issue of The Journal of Allergy & Clinical Immunology, shows that 70 percent of peanut-allergic patients who consumed daily doses of peanut protein in liquid drops ...
A cloudy mystery
2013-01-11
PASADENA, Calif.—It's the mystery of the curiously dense cloud. And astronomers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) are on the case.
Near the crowded galactic center, where billowing clouds of gas and dust cloak a supermassive black hole three million times as massive as the sun—a black hole whose gravity is strong enough to grip stars that are whipping around it at thousands of kilometers per second—one particular cloud has baffled astronomers. Indeed, the cloud, dubbed G0.253+0.016, defies the rules of star formation.
In infrared images of the galactic ...
Unemployment benefits not sought by jobless
2013-01-11
Montreal, January 9, 2013 – Employment insurance is a vital safety net for the unemployed across North America, yet some take advantage of the system. Recent headlines have made much of a recent report from the U.S. Department of Labor that 11 per cent of all unemployment benefits were overpaid between 2009-11. But new research from Concordia University proves that uncollected benefits represent a much larger dollar figure than overpayments.
In a study commissioned by the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, Concordia economics professor David Fuller examines the U.S. unemployment ...