Maternity and Preeclampsia |
The rate of preeclampsia in the United States has increased 25% in the last 20 years and it is the leading cause of maternal and infant illness and death.
Dr. Ellen Schwartzbard, Obstetrician and Gynecologist with Baptist Health South Florida, explains preeclampsia is when your blood pressure goes up combined with some other abnormalities, like protein in the urine or problems with your liver or your kidney. She points out how important prenatal care is, because you may not have any symptoms.
Transcript
Here’s an interesting fact did you know that the rate of preeclampsia in the US has increased 25 percent in the last two decades and it’s a leading cause of maternal and infant illness and death that’s a pretty alarming increase that’s an amazing number that is that’s big now what is preeclampsia and who is more at risk for it so preeclampsia is in pregnancy when your blood pressure goes up combined with some other abnormalities specifically we see protein in the urine or other lab abnormalities specifically problems with your liver or your kidney the specific criteria have changed a little bit over the years but that’s classically how we define preeclampsia and is it true there’s usually no symptoms you may not have any symptoms again I’m gonna go back to how important that prenatal care is yeah absolutely going all those visits that’s traditionally why every visit we will do your blood pressure your urine and wait because retaining all that water which classically occurs with preeclampsia you can go from one visit to the next and have a jump in that weight right so that’s what we do so what are you looking for exactly when you do the urine test the blood pressure the the heart rate up all those things right so somebody can have a classically elevated blood pressure 140 over 90 that’s the trigger number but sometimes it could be a little bit more subtle somebody has had very low blood pressure for them their numbers are 90 over 60 and suddenly for them there are 130 over 85 it might not hit that 140 over 90 criteria but you see a change so their blood pressure going up in the urine we’re classically looking for protein right and then the weight you I mean weight is important you’re always wanting to make sure people aren’t gaining too much weight because that’s a risk factor for all sorts of health problems and let me ask what is the amount of weight that a pregnant woman should be gaining in her pregnancy so classically we say for the whole pregnancy about 25 to 30 pounds back to them but that varies if you’re underweight or overweight at the start of your okay you.
