Transient hypertension in pregnancy is not pre-eclampsia: - abstract

ABSTRACT

Data from the Jamaican Perinatal Survey were examined to compare the management of women with pre-eclampsia and transient hypertension in pregnancy. The findings indicate that women with transient hypertension experienced no greater risk of perinatal mortality or growth retardation than the general population of women in spite of being managed more conservatively than their counterparts with pre-eclampsia. It would appear that interventions such as induction or Caesarean delivery are not generally warranted in the management of these cases as the complication does not carry the same risks to the infant or the mother that pre-eclampsia does. Further research is needed to determine what proportion of Jamaican women who present with an initial rise in blood pressure go on to develop pre-eclampsia and whether other signs of the pre-eclampsia syndrome would provide more sensitive indicators of risk than blood pressure, given a high prevalence of complications at lower blood pressures among Jamaican women and the low predictive value of blood pressure in identifying women at risk of eclampsia. Outpatient instead of inpatient management of women with transient hypertension appears to be a potentially cost-effective approach to care of these lower-risk women (AU)