Heartbeat: cardiovascular maternal health and disparities in clinical outcomes

Cardiovascular disease continues to account for a high proportion of pregnancy-related deaths in women in the USA. In addition to pre-existing heart disease, gestational hypertension and diabetes, as well as pre-eclampsia and eclampsia, are associated with an increased risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes both in the short and long-term. In this issue of Heart, Marschner and colleagues1 report an incidence of cardiometabolic conditions (hypertensive disease and diabetes) of 224.3 (95% CI 221.3 to 227.3) per 1000 births among 74 510 women, mean age 26.4 years (SD 5.5) in a cross-sectional study of Medicare patients from 2015 to 19. The incidence of adverse cardiovascular outcomes (myocardial infarction, stroke, acute heart failure, cardiomyopathy, cardiac arrest, ventricular fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia, aortic dissection/aneurysm and peripheral vascular disease) was 10.8 (95% CI 10.1 to 11.6)per 1000 births. Overall the risk of a serious cardiovascular outcome was more than 3-fold higher in women with a...
Source: Heart - Category: Cardiology Authors: Tags: Highlights from this issue Source Type: research