The number of complications arising from preeclampsia including fetal and infant deaths has registered a drop since the 1960s, according to a new study published in the September 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Preeclampsia is a potentially fatal condition where the blood pressure of the pregnant woman shoots up beyond control. Such a condition may prove detrimental to the health of both the mother as well as the child. Despite medical advances in the last few decades, preeclampsia usually results in the delivery of a premature baby, whose chances of surviving are minimal.
But lead author Olga Basso of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences said that the rates of survival in children is improving. "Babies had more than a fourfold risk of dying in utero during the first period [of the study], 1967 to 1978. At the end of the study, 1991 to 2003, the risk of stillbirth was 1.3-fold higher in mothers with preeclampsia," she said.
The study included data from Norway. It involved 804,448 first-born infants with Norwegian-born mothers, who were registered with the Medical Birth Registry of Norway. Between 1967 and 2003, there were 33,835 pregnancies with preeclampsia. Among these women premature birth before 37 weeks of gestation increased from 8 percent in 1967-1978 to nearly 20 percent in 1991-2003. Even death rates declined from 25 percent to 5 percent in 1991-2003.
"Preeclampsia still carries a 2-fold increased risk of neonatal death, which has changed little over time. This stability in neonatal risk is remarkable, considering the increasing number of very preterm deliveries in recent years resulting from aggressive obstetric management of preeclampsia," the researchers said. "Modern medical management of preeclampsia appears to have been effective in preventing fetal death without causing an increase in infant or maternal death.”
